The Strawberry Substitute
by Mikells
Summary: IchigoKurosaki is as normal a teenager as one might expect from someone who can see the dead. His wish for a normal life soon becomes the least of his concerns, however, when he meets Rukia Kuchiki, a Soul Reaper, who soon demands his help in fulfilling her duty to both of their worlds. (live action interpretation of Season 1. Please review if I should continue)
1. Part 1

**Part 1**

**The Strawberry and the Soul Reaper**

We stand in awe before that which cannot be seen.

And we respect with every fibre that which cannot be explained.


	2. Prologue

**Prologue**

The night sky sparkled with the sheer number of stars out that night. The moon was full and large, casting pale light over every building and street below. Together the moon and the stars ensured that the darkness of midnight in the world below was not absolute.

The town below was quiet at the late hour. Children were abed, and most of the adults as well slumbered away peacefully, oblivious to what tomorrow held in store for them, and yet at the same time anxious for the dawn, anticipating new challenges.

None of that was to the interest of the small figure in black attire that stood straight, balancing with perfect stillness and balance at the very top of a telegraph pole, gazing up at the moon as if waiting for something to become visible upon its distant and apparently pristine surface.

A lone butterfly, unmarked and as black as night itself flapped its wings as it drifted by the stranger's face and away to the west. The stranger did not bother with the small creature, deigning neither to gaze at it nor wave it away. It had remained in close proximity to her for the past half hour since her arrival in town, drawn to her presence by the instinct of its being. Only now that the stranger was using all means at their disposal to conceal their presence was the butterfly floating away from her, no longer drawn.

The stranger did not remain still for very long.

With black hair that framed a round, distinctly feminine face with large, expressive, dark-brown eyes and a slight build, the shape of which was hidden entirely by the black, loose fitting kosode and hakama and the white shitagi underneath, the stranger seemed to defy gravity as they made the distance from the telegraph pole upon which they stood to the next; from there leaping in a downward arc toward the nearest of the rooftops across the street and down a small hill. Each time they landed, there was no sound other than the slightest exhalation of breath. Extensive stealth training and the soft, straw waraji on the stranger's feet ensure that the stranger did not make a sound, did not make their presence known to any that might have taken advantage of that knowledge.

Stopping for a moment after landing on a third rooftop, the stranger looked up at the large moon again, frowning as something seemed to occur to them, and then jumped down to the street below and began a long, quick dash to the intersection at its end.

Idly, the stranger rested their hand on the pommel of the katana at their belt; its sheath was tucked through and tied securely to the white himo cinching their clothes around the waist. Though the stranger was sure that they would have no cause to draw the weapon in earnest that night, the decision was nonetheless made to check that it was loose in its scabbard.

They knew that, after all, anything could happen in the latest hours of night, when people were naturally inclined to be at their least suspecting and most vulnerable. And as a Reaper, they were not immune to those natural inclinations. Training helped to balance it out, however, in that the habit to constantly observe and be aware of ones surroundings was ingrained into the subject. And that was why with ever intersection the stranger passed on their way to the end of the street, they quickly checked to the left and right as they sped past to make sure that nothing lay in ambush behind the bulk of a house, or the hedge of a garden.

Reaching the end of the street, the stranger stopped, looked both ways, and then darted to the left; their eyes closed and other senses reaching out to find what they were searching for.


	3. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

**The Next Day  
****Karakura Town**

The afternoon sun was just starting to go down, and as such the sky burned with such a fierce orange that it would have been difficult to find someone that didn't think the sight beautiful. Clouds drifted by here and there in thin tufts edged in golden light from that setting sun, just enough to add to the atmosphere of the sunset, but not near enough to threaten anybody on the world below with promises of a wet night.

"Do you have a death wish, pal?"

The perpetrator of that brusque comment was a man in his late twenties. With narrowed, dark eyes and a white beanie jammed down onto a head of bushy brown hair that stuck out at the back. Thin sideburns lined his face, and a pair of hairy lines that were obviously supposed to be a moustache stuck out in both directions above his top lip. A thick gold chain dangled from his neck with a worn golden pendant. He wore camo pants down to his ankles, and his feet were snug inside military-style black boots.

"No one jumps one of my boys and lives to tell about it!" He cocked his arm back and charged forward at young man he had recriminated.

The younger man was tall and lean, with piercing brown eyes and hair that gave him more grief than his attitude ever did. It was a common thing for him to hear comments on how vividly _orange_ it was. Such talk only irritated him and reinforced his belief that people were stupid. Anyone with an ounce of orange knew that it was true red, and that what they thought was orange was actually much lighter. He was dressed in the white shirt and grey blazer and pants of the local high school, as well as a comfortable pair of runners that he was quite fond of. At his left hip was his schoolbag, the strap for which hung from the opposite shoulder.

The younger man didn't blink, didn't even flinch. His leg came up, hands still in his pockets as if the entire encounter bored him somewhat. His foot was placed perfectly so that the ruffian's face came crashing into it when he reached the younger man. Contact made, he grunted in pain and fell to his hands and knees on the hard concrete.

The high school boy brought his foot down hard on the ruffian's back, forcing him flat to the ground. He grunted again as he was kicked in the side, stomped on from above again, and then kicked a second time for good measure.

"Lil' Yama's down!" One of the other ruffians a couple of meters away from the confrontation cried out, his tone giving way to the disbelief at what had just happened. "We gotta help him!"

"Are you crazy?"

"No way am I taking on that psycho!"

The school boy looked up from the man he'd just kicked into the ground and took stock of the others still standing.

One of them, standing in the middle of his buddies, had a pug nose on a slightly rounded face, wore a cream-coloured beanie on his head that had yellow stripes, and sported a goatee on the end of his chin. A loose fitting, dark brown t-shirt covered a longer-sleeved lavender coloured one and he had two gold rings through his left eyebrow.

Standing to his right was a man around the same age that had a wide face with a flat nose dead centre, a thin silver chain around his neck the same pendant the others all wore on chains—"Lil' Yama" was the only one wearing a gold chain. His hair was black and bushy, too thick to be considered acceptable by societal standards and just thick enough to belong to a different decade. He wore a short-sleeved orange shirt over a black one.

Standing on the first guy's left was another, what seemed to be a perpetual scowl painted on his face, clothed in a light brown coat over a vivid red shirt and brown trousers. His dark hair was slicked back into a greasy ponytail, and he had high arching eyebrows.

At their feet lay another, whom the kid had knocked out first. All that could be seen of him from the school boy's vantage point was the baggy beige jacket and beanie with grey pants.

"Listen up, pond scum," the school boy started, calmly at first. The three of them complained angrily about the insult until the boy cut a motion with his right hand to silence them. "Do you see that!"

He swung his hand around to a point off to his right and behind him and extended his forefinger, pointing. "First question; what the hell do you think that is? You—in the middle! Answer!"

The guy in the middle with the upturned nose and the goatee blinked. "You talking to me, you little shit?"

The school boy dropped his hand to his side and clenched it into a fist until a couple of the knuckles cracked menacingly.

Goatee swallowed heavily. "I guess some flowers that somebody left for some kid that got killed there," he offered, his bravado resurfacing for a moment and his speech nonchalant.

The glass vase itself was shattered into three large pieces, as well as numerous smaller ones. The water that had been within had since spilled across the concrete and onto the road, and the flowers, only slightly wilted, were sprawled on the sidewalk. Some of the petals were missing, and one of the stems looked as though crushed by a skateboard wheel.

The school boy wasted no time in responding. With a vicious knee to the gut and a punch to the face, he knocked the offending ruffian to the ground, where he tumbled away a little and came to a stop complaining about his nose.

"Correct!" the red-haired youth shouted in his direction. He turned to the other two, looking from one to the other. "Now," he paused, "next question; that vase over there … why is it broken?"

Flat Nose grunted. "I guess … I guess one of us knocked it over by accident when we were 'boarding through here." The way he said it was almost a question, like he was taking a guess at what the youth wanted to hear from him, rather than owning up to his mistake. "We didn't—"

But he didn't get the chance to finish. A fist clocked him in the side of the head, and his remaining compatriot standing was also knocked down with a punch coming from the opposite direction. "You guys catch on quick," the school boy said, hand on his hip now, the other still in his pocket.

Planting his right foot down on the leader of the group to make sure he didn't try to get up and surprise him, he looked over his shoulder at the telegraph pole he'd indicated. Trying to hide behind it was a waif of a girl, barely a couple of years younger than himself with brown hair in pigtails and large eyes that took in the scene with something akin to a mixture of wonder and fright.

He turned back to the group of ruffians, kicked hard at the guy by his foot so that he rolled once towards his friends. "Now; go and apologise, or else, next time, the flowers will be for you worthless scum!"

It wasn't often that someone could say that a group of tough-looking adult trouble makers were intimidated, even frightened, by a teenage boy. This was one of those rare instances. All five of them scrambled to their feet, crying out their apologies only half-genuinely over their shoulders as they grabbed hold of their skateboards and ran off in the direction the teenager had come from as fast as they could.

The teenager watched them go with disgust. He couldn't believe just how many people there were who could give a damn about respect. Mostly, such behaviour was present in the people his own age. He saw plenty of it in the people he went to school with. But it wasn't exclusive to teenagers, he knew. Even adults could behave terribly at times.

He spat on the ground in the direction of the fleeing skateboarders. "Assholes," he muttered to himself before he turned back towards the telegraph pole and the girl trying to hide behind it.

She'd come out of her "hiding" spot a little further, now, watching as those that had destroyed the vase the teenage boy had put there for her two days ago. She looked up at him, somewhat shyly. "Thank you, Mister," she said quietly. "You didn't have to do anything about that, you know."

The teenage boy huffed. "Yes I did. No one else would have, and some people need to be taught a lesson in respect. Just because you're dead, that doesn't mean that you deserve any less respect than you were entitled to when you were alive."

Because the truth of the matter was that the girl was in fact dead.

Two weeks had passed since the teenager had seen the report on the news. Crossing the road with her mother, the girl had been just two steps behind when a drunk-driver had swung his car around the corner and sent her rolling over the top of it before cracking her skull on the pavement. The only consolation for her parents had been that the driver had then proceeded to wrap his car around a tree two minutes and five blocks later. He died slowly in hospital from his injuries.

But the girl's spirit had lingered in that one spot since that day, a chain as intangible as her semi-opaque form sprouting obscenely from the middle of her chest and wrapping itself around the telegraph pole to tether her to the place of her death until she could find the peace to move on to the next life.

The teenager had made it a point to come to the site on his way to school twice a week to put fresh flowers and water in the small glass vase he had brought from the store. While he could think of no way in which he could help her to overcome whatever it was that kept her tethered to the living world, he figured that he could at least attempt to give her unrest some measure of pleasure by providing her something pleasurable to look at. It also conveyed the message to her that he, and likely others,

"I'll come by tomorrow with some more flowers, is that all right?" he said, smiling down at the young girl.

She toed the ground with her left foot, still looking down shyly. "That's all right, Mister. Really—I don't mind."

"It's the least I can do," the teenager offered, hoping it would be enough to reassure her. "After all; you deserve to rest in peace." And with that, the girl disappeared.


	4. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Stepping up onto the porch of his home, the teenager stopped for a moment and took a breath. After the day's excitement, all he wanted was a peaceful evening eating a late dinner with his sisters and then an equally peaceful sleep. He wouldn't bother with homework tonight, he decided; it could wait until tomorrow, it wasn't due in until the end of the week.

He reached for the doorknob and twisted it, then he pushed the door open and stepped inside. "I'm h—"

He didn't get the time to finish. In a cruel twist of irony of the afternoon's events, a huge fist came flying straight towards his face the second he'd entered the house.

Thinking quickly, he ducked to the side. But, unfortunately, he wasn't quick enough and the blow connected with the side of his head, sending him reeling. He collided with the door frame with an "oof_"_ as the air was expelled from his lungs. "You let your guard down!" a hard voice came from about a meter away. There was a slapping sound of a fist thumping into an open hand, followed by, "Always stay alert when you enter a room—and you're late for dinner again!"

The teenage boy shook his head to dispel the stars flashing before his eyes and took a deep breath to fill his lungs again. Truth be told, he was used to this kind of treatment by now, but when caught unprepared like that, he couldn't really ready himself for just how much his father's fists hurt.

Isshin Kurosaki was a big man. He was easily a head taller than Ichigo with those same piercing eyes combined with short black hair spiked upwards in some middle-aged attempt to recapture some sort of youth. Stubble covered the lower half of his face, and over the bland shirt and trousers he wore was the long white coat of his trade.

Unfortunately for his son, he also happened to be the kind of father that insisted on ensuring the preparedness of his child for the world, and to that end he often launched these surprise attacks to see just how well his son learned from him the importance of always being prepared, and just how well he could defend himself.

"Come _on_!" the teenager shouted at his father, annoyed. After the day he'd had, the last thing he needed or wanted was to deal with Isshin's brutishness. "Is that any way to welcome your own son? Especially after he just risked his life to help a spirit find peace!" OK, so maybe he stretched that point a little bit, but it was still sound.

"Silence!" his father roared, rounding on him again. "So it's the ghosts' fault, is it? I suppose it's the ghosts' fault that you left your room a mess … _again_. When are you going to start showing off that impressive discipline I've been stamping into you?"

Past his dad, the teenager could see that his sisters were already seated at the kitchen table. Karin had her back to him, her black hair still hanging straight down to her shoulders and her right arm moving up and down as she transferred rice to her waiting mouth. Opposite her was her lighter-haired and more feminine twin sister, Yuzu. Her hair was shorter and styled in a bob cut. She was wearing a yellow hoodie to Karin's blue and black sports shirt, and over the top of that was the white apron that seemed stitched to her home attire. A small red hairpin on the left side in the shape of a strawberry kept a lock of her hair from blocking her sight.

Yuzu frowned in his direction, holding up a serving spoon. "Dad! Ichigo! Stop the fighting for once, please? Just come over here and eat your dinner!"

The teenager, Ichigo, smiled at the motherly way in which his younger sister spoke to them. Also at Karin's response of "Let them fight. More rice for me" as she held out her bowl.

"Karin! That's not very nice." Yuzu pouted, getting to her feet.

It was just the four of them living together. Ichigo's mother had died years ago, and that had changed each of them in uniquely definable ways. Isshin had started his son's brutal "training" regime to make him stronger and toughen him up. Yuzu had taken over all of the domestic duties, as if she felt that without their mother she was the only one qualified. She cleaned everything, she cooked everything, and she always endeavoured to break up the fights between Ichigo and his father whenever they sprung up. It was only natural that she was the gentlest of the four of them. Her twin sister, who had been a very typical young girl when their mother had been alive, had since become the silent type. She made friends easily enough, but Ichigo felt that she always withheld the core of herself from those friendships.

Ichigo himself … well that was another story, one too painful for him to remember. It wasn't the right time.

Recovering quickly, he clenched his left hand and swung hard. The blow connected with Isshin's jawbone, sending him stumbling back a meter before falling on his behind hard.

"I gotta tell you, Dad," Ichigo started, fist still clenched as he glared down at his father. "For any _normal_ healthy high school kid, a 7 o'clock curfew is totally uncool!"

"Poor Ichigo," Karin muttered from her seat. Ichigo looked over at her again as she chewed on another mouthful of rice. "It's always Dad or ghosts."

"I think he's kind of lucky to see ghosts," Yuzu replied cheerfully. She sat down again and spooned another helping of rice into her own bowl before putting the utensil down and picking up her chopsticks. "I sort of sense their presence sometimes, I think. But that's about it."

Karin sighed. "I don't get the big deal," she said, resignedly. "I don't even believe in them."

Yuzu gasped, and Ichigo just chuckled at the clever defiance. That was a good way to deal with it, he supposed, but he had never been able to ignore them for as long as he'd seen them. Though Karin could see them as well, she had a more pragmatic approach.

"Karin! I don't get how you can say something like that! I though you could see them too?" Yuzu protested.

Her twin shrugged, helped herself to some of her sister's rice. "I'm in permanent denial," she said through a mouth full. "Just because I can see them, doesn't mean I believe in them."

Shaking his head, Ichigo began walking over towards his sisters. But he'd barely taken a step when one arm went around his neck, and the other came up to lock it in place. His throat constricted, air became a luxury. He rationed his breath, which did little good when his father followed the sneak attack through by putting all of his weight on his son's back, driving them both to the floor. Ichigo's chin hit the hard wooden panels, and pain shot through his jaw. His head pounded anew, and the wind again was driven from him.

He couldn't move his torso or his legs—his father's bulk was pinning them down. With arms around his throat in that fashion, he couldn't much move his head either. But he judged that most of the weight atop him was to the left a little. There was an overlap, and Ichigo could still move his arms.

He jerked back with his left, and felt his elbow connect with Isshin's stomach. The wind was driven from the older man and Ichigo bucked until he had some wiggle room. Then he flipped onto his back, worked his knees up to his chest, planted his feet against his father, and shoved hard.

_Get up_, Ichigo thought to himself. He took a large gulp of air to feed to his lungs and, leaning forward to brace against the floor with his hands, pushed up to his feet.

Isshin got to his feet at the same time, seemingly ready for more. He'd gotten his wind back, and didn't look in nearly enough discomfort to make up for the sneak attack. Ichigo would rectify that.

He swung again with a closed fist. He felt it contact Isshin's other cheek, and simultaneously felt a fist collide with the side of his face. There was less power in it than there should have been. He judged that perhaps his father was better at hiding weakness and discomfort better than he had originally thought. It seemed likely from that one punch that he was still recovering from the elbow to the gut and the hard kick.

The fist still hurt, however. He'd have a bruise there in the morning, for sure.

Isshin fell to his knees, cradling the side of his face while his son flexed his fingers to work some of the soreness out of his knuckles.

"No charge … for the lesson," he wheezed, before falling on his side and curling up in a ball.

"Gah!" Ichigo huffed. He gave his dad's side a final kick with hardly any power in it before picking his bag up from the floor and heading for the stairs next to the kitchen. "I'm going to my room."

"Wait Ichigo!" he heard Yuzu call out behind him.

He paid her no heed, instead climbing the steps slowly, taking them one at a time. He still flexed his fingers, opening and closing his fist. His knuckles still hurt, especially his palm where the hard blows had driven his nails in. He hadn't broken the skin, but the indentation of the nails was there nonetheless. He worked at them with the thumb of his other hand, trying to smooth over the gouges.

The door to his room was halfway down the hall, between the twins' room which was closer to the stairs and opposite, and his father's room right down the end. The large 15 on the door went ignored, as was normal, as he pushed the door open with his toe, finding it still unlatched from when he'd left it that morning.

Nothing seemed disturbed, as he looked around in the dim light coming through the window. Yuzu hadn't been in to clean. She would do that tomorrow. Routine. The bed hadn't even been made.

He dumped his school bag down on the chair turned away from his study desk; the strap draped over the back of the chair. Then he reached across the bed to the window latch, unhooked it and slid it open. He turned and slumped down on his back on the bed, looking up at the plain, boring ceiling he looked up at each night, and tried not to think.

More fights at school, more fights in the streets, more fights at home. Would there be any end to the fights? At least his father didn't pick on him for his hair, which had been inherited from his mother's side of the family.

The two fights at school that day had been because of his hair. Both of the culprits had, mistakenly, of course, assumed that Ichigo dyed his hair red to be different from everyone else. And, for some reason, some people just couldn't hear truth. It didn't matter how many times you told someone that it was natural, they just wouldn't listen, like they had been programmed from birth to ignore the truth.

There was some consolation that the afternoon's conflict hadn't necessarily been triggered by his hair either. In fact, he'd started that one when he'd seen the idiot in the beige pants jacket and beanie knocking over the vase he'd spent his own cash on.

Disrespectful cretin.

He hoped that tomorrow would bring a milder day.


	5. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

The morning brought to Ichigo the surprise of a rising sun's rays in his eyes. The brightness jolted him to a wakened state quickly, and he rubbed the sleep from his eyes before groaning and turning on to his side, away from the sunlight.

It became obvious to him pretty quickly that he would get little more sleep than he'd had, however. As it was, he couldn't remember actually falling to sleep the previous night. The last thing he remembered was making the decision to do some homework, despite his promise to himself not to, just to pass the remaining hours of the night.

Apparently, he'd drifted off shortly after that but before actually leaving the comfort of his bed to take up the task in earnest. He hadn't even shut the window, or the curtains.

Sighing, he got out of bed and, after a quick shower and brushing his teeth, slipped into another uniform. He left yesterday's uniform in the laundry hamper for Yuzu to pick up later, and then slipped on shoes and socks before grabbing his school bag and skipping down the steps to the main level of the house.

He quickly looked around for any sign of his father, saw him nowhere, and nodded to himself as he made his way over to where his sisters were seated at the table. Karin was sipping from a glass of orange juice, a plate empty save the toast crumbs clinging to it sitting in front of her. Yuzu, apron and all, was frying eggs on the stove while checking that more toast wasn't burning in the toaster.

The T.V. was on in the open living room next to the dining and kitchen areas. The sound was turned down too far for him to make out the reporter's voice, but from the images it seemed like there had been some sort of explosion. The caption at the bottom of the screen told viewers what street it was on.

"That's not too far from here," he said to his sisters. Yuzu looked up at him, confused, and he nodded towards the T.V. to point out what he was referring to. She looked at the images on the screen, chewed her bottom lip for a moment, and then nodded.

The toaster saved the silence. Ichigo snagged one of the pieces that jumped out at him, hissing as the heat burnt his fingers a little. "Careful, Ichigo!" Yuzu scolded. She tried to get a look at his fingers, but he waved her away. It wasn't bad.

After his sister spread a thin layer of jam over its surface, he ruffled her hair and set off with a "Have a good day at school!" to both of them.

A quick stop by the store rectified the problem he'd been presented with the previous afternoon. 500 yen scored him another vase, which he filled with water from a tap behind the store and picked three flowers with long stems from a garden without asking to slip into it. Then he proceeded to the telegraph pole.

When he reached the pole, he crouched down and put the vase down at its base, a full meter from the road itself. But there was no sign of her.

Typically, Ichigo's presence there had been enough for her to make herself known and greet him. This morning however, it seemed like she was a little tardy. Or perhaps she was sleeping. Did spirits sleep, he wondered. "Hello?" he called out softly so that only she could hear him if she was near.

The chain that bound her to that spot was still there, he noticed, but after about five meters of length, most of which was coiled around the pole, it seemed to fade out entirely.

Had she broken her bonds and finally moved on?

A distant howl shattered the thought. It came from the direction of the central district of Karakura Town, and it most definitely was like no sound he had ever heard before; high and mournful, inhuman, and definitely not a wolf or a dog. The howl sounded again from the same direction, followed by a high, feminine scream.

He'd never heard the girl spirit scream before, but something within him told him that the sound had definitely come from her. He couldn't explain how he knew that.

Gripping his bag tightly, he ran down the street and turned right onto the next one. He followed that street past two intersections before he reached the main road that went all the way through the central district. His arms pumped at his sides as he ran towards town, willing his legs to ignore the fact that he hadn't stretched before leaving home that morning.

When he got to the scene, he found something that was almost as surprising as his father's sneak attack.

Great swathes of concrete had been gouged out of the side of buildings around him; parallel trenches in the hard surface that looked like they could have been made by something dragging clawed nails through them. Chunks and powdered concrete littered the ground near those great swathes. People stood around everywhere, whispering confusedly and looking around. A couple of them were pointing to the great injuries in the building, openly pointing out to anyone that was listening.

A crack in the sidewalk stopped Ichigo. Something heavy had fallen there. Recently. It hadn't been there yesterday. Was it all—the crack in the sidewalk, and the gouges in the buildings—really nothing more than the product of shoddy workmanship and poor material use?

An explosion caught his attention. He dashed around the corner of the damaged building to see smoke pouring through the gaping hole that looked like had been ripped in the side of the building.

Definitely not terrible workmanship or substandard materials.

The ground shuddered, and there was a loud thumping noise like a giant's footstep. Ichigo backed away a step closer to the corner. "Help!"

The girl!

She appeared, bursting through the smoke that continued to billow out and up to the sky. Translucent tears streamed down her face as she sprinted in his direction.

She seemed lucid enough to recognise him through the fear though. As soon as she did, she waved at him and screamed a single word to him: "RUN!"

Another thump, and the ground beneath his feet shuddered again.

"What the …" he wondered.

Whiteness came through the smoke. At first, Ichigo thought it was part of the building's exterior that had come loose and was falling. Another crash, another mini quake beneath his feet, and the whiteness pushed through completely.

Ichigo's eyes went wide at the around skull-like visage; oval eye sockets occupied by what looked like gleaming emeralds the swivelled freely, and a mouth set in a seemingly permanent grin that revealed every one of its pearly-white teeth. Purple markings ringed the lipless grin and the eyes, flaring backwards along the skull-like head from the eyes to the back.

As whatever it was came forth from the smoke, it howled again, and more of its body came into view. Its head was connected to a spiderlike body by a long, segmented wormlike neck. The body had six legs, each ending in a jagged spike that kept it, somehow, perfectly balanced. Two arms with those same jagged spikes at the end extended from halfway up the segmented neck, curved and wicked looking.

"What happened?" Voices around Ichigo caused him to look around quickly. People were staring in the creature's direction, but none of them said anything about it. No one screamed, no one shouted caution or warning. Everyone seemed curious about the apparent explosion.

Ichigo knew now that it wasn't a real explosion. It had been caused by the thing forcing its way out from the building's interior. And he knew as certain as he knew his name that no one but him and girl could see it.

It must be some kind of spirit. And by the looks of its fearsome appearance, and the girl running from it, it had to be a terrible one.

Ichigo had no idea how to fight spirits. He couldn't touch them, only see them. At least, that was true of the everyday spirits like the little girl who were only partly in the world. He had never encountered a ghost like this before. Could he touch it? Could it touch him?

Could it hurt him?

He ran, falling in step beside the girl as she sprinted away from it. Fear drove his legs, fear of the unknown. He wasn't willing to stick around and wait to see if the thing could hurt him. That was stupid, and Ichigo definitely wasn't stupid.

"What is that thing?" the girl asked. Unlike Ichigo, she wasn't panting with the effort of running. Rapid, thunderous steps sounded behind them. It was following them.

"No idea!" Ichigo responded through heavy breathing.

He concentrated on sorting himself out. He evened out his breathing and forced his legs to continue. He pumped as much energy as he had into those legs, powering each long stride. The two of them shot around the corner, ploughing through a crowd of gathering onlookers that had no idea what was bearing down on them.

"Ouch!" Ichigo glanced over his shoulder and saw that the girl had stopped. Tripped, actually. Her foot had caught in a crack in the concrete and she was slowly pushing herself back to her feet.

He started back for her. The creature came around the corner, stopping for a moment to stare at the two of them—assuming those emerald eyes really could see, Ichigo thought to himself—and then started towards them, slowly, confidently, it seemed.

Ichigo knelt beside the girl and grabbed her by the hand, pulling her to her feet. He whirled just as something dark streaked over his shoulder in the direction of the creature.

On instinct, he hit the ground as another mini quake shook the sidewalk. A couple of people nearby looked at him strangely, but he quickly got back to his feet and turned again to look at the creature.

Someone was fighting it. Whoever it was had a katana in their hands, dark hair falling in a curtain all around their face, wearing what looked like a black kimono with a white himo. They slashed out at the creature, the sword passing easily through its forward-most left leg and severing it at the joint.

The creature howled in anger and reared back on its two rearmost legs, mimicking what stallions sometimes did to intimidate their rivals. Despite the ugly sliminess of the creature, it was somehow a majestic thing to see.

The newcomer bent their legs and jumped straight up into the air.

"That's not possible!" he muttered to himself. For the stranger had launched themself higher than was humanly possible.

A hand grasped his frantically, and he looked to the side to see the girl had gripped his hand and was watching the spectacle through wide eyes.

The newcomer spun once in the air when they were at a height with the monster's head. Ichigo thought whoever it was looked like a girl. It was in the face, brief as the sight had been through the whipping hair and the fluttering kimono. The sword flashed again, and reddish-black blood spilled through the thin, straight crack that appeared in that white skull-face.

It roared, and reared back further, lashing out with its arms and its last remaining front leg. Ichigo dodged to the side, taking the girl with him in a roll that must have looked strange to those nearby. They barely avoided being skewered against the sidewalk by the thing's leg.

Ichigo breathed a sigh of relief when he looked up and saw the strange newcomer drag her sword through the thing's skull from top to bottom, splitting it evenly down the middle. Blood spewed, splattered against the building and puddling on the sidewalk beneath it as the katana continued downward, slicing the entire creature in half.

"Whoa!" Ichigo whispered in amazement.

The newcomer landed a few paces away from where he and the girl lay—not quite on the sidewalk, but not quite in the road either. People glanced at him as they went past to check out the explosion. The stranger in the black kimono flicked her sword out to the side, and any trace of that reddish-black blood was flung free from its gleaming surface. Then she sheathed it, glanced back at him once, and disappeared.


	6. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Ichigo's day couldn't possibly have gotten any better than that. That he could say that with all that had happened was strange in itself.

The explosions and the building damage had been explained away on the news as structural defects. No true explanation had actually been found. None would likely ever be found. Ichigo and the little spirit girl had been the only ones that had seen what had actually happened.

Every time he closed his eyes throughout the day he could see the fearsome visage of that monster, and the stoic expression on the face of the girl that had killed it right in front of him.

That it was a bad spirit went without saying. But why had it looked so different from a regular spirit. He had always envisioned bad spirits just being spirits of bad people. Never had it occurred to him that in death bad people would resemble the monsters they had been in life.

There was always the possibility he was wrong, he reasoned. Just because he and the spirit girl could see it, that didn't necessarily make it a spirit. It could have been a shared delusion. That wasn't unheard of. Though, it was unheard of for a delusion to be shared by someone living and dead that had had no prior connection when both had been living. Or perhaps it was just a monster that stalked spirits, and thus hid itself from everyone else as a means of protection, lest it be hunted. That Ichigo could see it was only remarkable inasmuch as he could see spirits.

That made sense.

The image flashed through his mind again of that strange girl in the street; the one wearing the black kimono with a sword in hand. The look of dismissal she had given him and the spirit girl before she'd leapt out of sight.

"Who was she?" he asked himself absently, squeezing his eyes shut tight so he could examine the image in his mind. "I can't make any sense of what happened out there today."

A butterfly floated through the window, black as night with no markings and long antennae. Ichigo frowned, about it wave the insect back out through the window, when a black form followed it through the window.

Feet placed firmly apart and wearing a black kimono, the girl from that morning stood on his bed, but somehow did not put any weight on it. Ichigo sat up at once and stared at her. What was she doing here? How had she found him? _Why_ had she found him?

"What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded angrily. She didn't even look at him this time, unlike in the street. He wondered at that. But then, he figured that whatever she was looking for, assuming it wasn't him by the fact that she should have noticed him, she was just too absorbed in her thoughts. "Hello? I asked you a question, damnit!"

Her hand came to rest on the hilt of her katana, and she flicked the guard to make sure that the weapon was loose in its scabbard.

Fear seized him. Instantly, he was backed up against the headboard of his bed, his arms holding his knees tightly to his chest. Did she mean to kill him? That could be the only reason she was there. She'd obviously determined that because he had seen the monster that morning, and seen her dispatching it, that he had to be dealt with. Had she already killed the girl as well?

No. If she had wanted them dead she could have just let the creature kill them both before she destroyed it. Her hands, and her sword, would not have been stained with the deed, then.

"Put that thing away!" he said quickly, pointing at the sword. "You're not slicing me up!"

Without a word, or indeed even a glance in his direction, the girl leap from the bed to the floor and started looking around in earnest. It wasn't lost on Ichigo that there had been no sound in that movement, no squeak of the bed springs as she coiled and sprang, no scuffing of the waraji on her feet as they made contact with the wood panelled floor of his room. Only ninjas were trained to be so stealthy. Ichigo's fear ratcheted skywards at that single thought. Ninjas were assassins.

"Hey!" He uncoiled from where he had been cowering, shuffling to the edge of the bed. She made no move towards him, no recognition of his presence in the slightest.

"It's getting closer," she said softly. It didn't sound to Ichigo as if she was addressing anyone in particular. That she had so far decided to ignore him led him to believe that she wasn't talking to him. Likely, she was voicing her own thoughts to herself. People did that occasionally. "I feel it."

He frowned. Feel what? What's getting closer? What the hell is this idiot talking about? Why the hell is she here? What's with that sword?

He got up; reeled back his left foot, and then kicked hard at the girl's behind. With a surprised yelp, she crashed head-first into the door of his wardrobe and crumpled to the floor. Ichigo stomped over to the door to his room and flicked the light switch. The darkness gone, he could make her out better than before—especially considering what he had seen of her on the street that morning had been fleeting.

She looked young for a ninja thief. If he were to guess, she was maybe a year his junior, and only slightly taller than Yuzu and Karin. She looked thin, despite that he couldn't really make out the shape of her body under the kimono. She had a round face that could have been described as cute, large dark eyes ad thick lashes, with a curtain of hair that had a stray lock down the front where it almost obscured the view from her left eye.

Despite the fact that he thought she was a rather pretty girl, there was no denying that she was a thief, possibly a ninja as well. He was irritated. "If you think you're a burglar, I'll tell you that you're not a very good one!" he said angrily, advancing on her as she turned over and pressed her back up against the wardrobe. "For starters, stealth is key, and that means you shouldn't talk to yourself aloud while trying to commit the crime!" He aimed for a little intimidation by clenching his right hand into a fist and punching his open left palm.

"You kicked me!" she whined indignantly. Her voice was something he hadn't expected. When he'd taken into account her appearance and her size, he'd expected her to sound like a child as well. She didn't. She sounded like she could have been a junior at his high school. How strange.

"So? You broke into my home," Ichigo pointed out.

"But …" She stopped, chewed her bottom lip and looked off to the side for a moment before returning her gaze to his face. "But, I can't be seen by ordinary people. Are you saying you can see me?"

"Considering that was my foot I just planted on your behind, how about you tell me? Seems like a stupid question." He punched his palm again and advanced another step.

Slowly, she pushed herself back to her feet and away from t he wardrobe door. She rubbed her behind where he had kicked her with her hand, trying to soothe whatever pain she must have been feeling. Ichigo hadn't held back much when he'd decided to kick her, only enough that she wouldn't crack her skull open when she hit the door.

"You were the one I saw in town this morning," she said, looking up at him—literally; looking _up_ at him. "I remember your face. You were with that girl's spirit when the Hollow attacked."

"Wow," Ichigo retorted with a frown, "nothing gets by you. The new Sherlock Holmes, I see."

She approached him and with the hand that had been trying to massage feeling back into her rear, she reached up and touched his chin tentatively. She tilted her head from side to side, turning his an inch this way, an inch that way. It was obvious to Ichigo that he was being subjected to an examination of sorts. Though, what she could possibly be looking to find eluded him.

"How very strange," she muttered as she forced his head down, got up on her tiptoes and started checking out the top of his head. She ran a hand roughly through his messy hair. "You look normal. But that doesn't make sense. You have to be defective in some way."

"I'll show _you_ defective!" He arced out with his leg again, but with lightning fast reflexes he should have expected after her fight with the creature that morning, she ducked under it, put her hand against his calf for balance as she leapt up and over his shoulder to land on the floor behind him.

He felt both of her hands connect with the small of his back. If she was strong, she held back. He felt no pain other than the jarring as he caught his fall with his hands.

It couldn't be true, but Ichigo was sure that the entire event had taken only one second to pass. Surely, no one moved that fast. "Who are you?"

She ignored the question. "You saw the creature this morning as well, didn't you?" she asked instead. "The one that I destroyed," she added as if it needed clarification. Perhaps she expected that he saw monsters like that all the time.

He nodded when he was back on his feet and facing her. "What was it?"

"It was called a Hollow," she said. Unceremoniously, she shoved Ichigo's schoolbag off his chair onto the floor, and sat down on the seat herself, fiddling with the angle of her katana so that it didn't bump against anything. "Your world would call them evil spirits. In essence, that's what they are. They feed on the spirits of those that have passed on—sometimes even the souls of the living. I can't explain why, because I don't know. It's just the way they've always been."

"And you—what … hunt them?" Ichigo asked, nodding at the sword.

She glanced down at it before looking at him again and nodding wordlessly. A minute passed in silence before she spoke again. "I am what is known as a Soul Reaper. As the name implies, we reap the souls that have become evil and who stalk the friendlier souls."

"Like the spirit of that girl."

"Yes. We call them Wholes."

"Well, that's a stupid name. In fact, calling the monsters Hollows doesn't make any sense either. They're both stupid names. Who came up with them, a five-year-old?"

Quick as a flash, she was in front of him and had swung at the side of his head before returning to the seat again. Ichigo cradled the spot where she had struck him. She hadn't held back that time. It felt just like when his father hit him during one of his "lessons". She was a lot stronger than he had anticipated.

"The difference between the two is the reason they were named what they are. Wholes are whole spirits of people who have not yet passed on into the Soul Society."

"The Soul Society, eh?"

"Think of it as … er … does your world believe in the afterlife?"

"Some do. Supposedly paradise awaits us after death. Most call it Heaven. A person's soul is supposed to go there after they die to live eternally with a divine being they call God."

"A crude description, but I suppose it'll suffice," she said with a sigh. Ichigo huffed. It's the world I come from, where all Soul Reapers come from. One of the responsibilities of a Soul Reaper is to help those souls that don't pass over on their own to do so. We call this _kons__ō_. Most spirits are able to pass over on their own, however, so it's rare that we're required to perform _kons__ō_.

"Our main responsibility is hunting Hollows and making sure that they don't harm the living, and, if possible, stop them from feeding on the suffering Wholes."

"You haven't finished explaining the difference between the two," Ichigo pointed out irritably.

"I haven't?" The girl thought on it. "I just assumed that when I said there was a difference and explained what a Whole was that you would put it together from there. Obviously, you _are_ a defective human.

"Hollows are spirits that aren't whole, obviously," she said. Ichigo rolled his eyes. "What a Hollow is at its core is pure instinct, bundled up in a monstrous form similar to the one you saw today. It lacks a heart, which Wholes still have—even if it's not physical."

"So; let me get this straight …" He pointed at the girl and arched an eyebrow. "Not a burglar?" She shook her head. "You're something called a Soul Reaper … and you hunt evil spirits, called Hollows, while saving the good spirits, called Wholes, and help them pass on to the next life? Is that about right? Did I leave anything out?"

"Only the part where I saved your life today," she said smugly. "But other than that, yeah you've pretty much nailed it on the head."

That's not how the saying goes, Ichigo thought to himself. "God damn it!" he hissed, exasperated. "I'm more likely to believe in flying pigs and the God damned Tooth Fairy. What you've said makes absolutely no sense!"

"How so?"

"Well, for starters, I only believe that which I can see."

"You can see me," the girl pointed out angrily. She stood up and walked over to him. "And you saw that Hollow this morning that attacked the girl you were with. And you can see _her_, and, presumably, other spirits."

"And I'm quite happy to believe all three," Ichigo said with a condescending smile. "But this Soul Society of yours? I'm sorry but it's just totally unbelievable."

He put a hand on the top of her head and gently patted her hair. "So run along, little brat, and spin your story for someone who's a lot more gullible."

She tensed under his hand. He could feel it even from that single, simple contact. Her grip on the hilt of her katana tightened until her knuckles were white. Her whole body went rigid.

"So, I'm a brat, am I?" she said in low tones he barely heard. "I see."

"Look—"

"Bakudō number one," she continued, "_Sai!_"


	7. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

The boy's arms locked to his sides at her utterance. Elbows bent back all of their own accord until his wrists were crossed behind him. His whole body seized up. He exhaled a breath in surprise, and then collapsed like a board to the floor.

He didn't move, save his eyes which darted back and forth, trying to find the cause of his paralysis. His lips worked around words he couldn't quite form—due to surprise, not the _kid__ō_ she had hit him with.

"What …" he looked up at her as realisation finally dawned. "What did you do to me?" he demanded.

The Soul Reaper grinned down at him and then crouched to look him in the eye. He tried to wriggle free, but the paralysis was almost total; everything except his mouth and eyes. He could talk, he could look around—without moving his head—but that was all he could do.

"It's called _Kidō_. Compressing spiritual energy in certain ways allows a Soul Reaper to perform any number of tasks, depending on intention, requirement and power used. Skill comes into play as well, but I've been studying and performing _kidō_ for nearly a hundred years. A little paralysis spell like this is child's play."

"Paralysis?" the boy tried struggling again. "Take it off me."

"Stop struggling. You won't get free," she advised. It was true. Unless she seeped in enough spiritual energy to snap the paralysis bindings, he wouldn't be free. He might be able to see spirits, but he was still human and there was no way a human could counter a _kidō_ spell of even the lowest level. "Now be quiet."

The boy glared up at her, contempt blazing in his eyes. That was fine. What was a single human compared to her? His opinion mattered not. As soon as she was done, she would be out of his life and never would she look back at this pitiful boy.

But why was she here? She had been tracing the spiritual pressure of a second Hollow all through the day after having killed the other one in the street. Its presence had been clear from across the town. While she had been dispatching the weaker one, the other had been on the edge of Karakura Town devouring a spirit.

But that Hollow was not here now. In fact, she'd lost all sense of it in the hours since she had felt its presence. She could feel _something_ in close proximity. And that sense was growing with each passing moment. But that presence didn't feel Hollow, exactly. It didn't feel like any spiritual pressure she'd ever encountered before, so she was unable to put her finger on what it could possibly be. Instead, she glanced at the struggling boy on the floor, his darting eyes trying to find a way free, his teeth bared in frustration.

"The second Hollow should be around here, somewhere," she insisted, if only to herself. This boy couldn't possibly help her in tracking it, and he was that preoccupied anyway with trying to free himself that he likely wasn't paying any attention to what she was saying. "It couldn't have gotten very far."

"What are you talking about?" he growled from somewhere near her feet. She looked down at him, surprised to note that he appeared to have moved a couple of inches from where he had fallen. She dismissed it. No; she was imagining things, surely. He wasn't able to move himself. He couldn't even rock his body side to side to roll over.

"Huh?"

"Can't you hear that howling?"

Before, she couldn't. She had been too caught up in her own musings and recriminations for having lost the second Hollow that she hadn't been paying attention to the world around her. But she did now. It was a low keening howl that seemed to pierce deep into her soul and freeze her in place.

She whirled to face the window. "I let myself get too caught up in thinking to actually listen," she muttered. "Oh, what a fool!" A loud crash from below caught her attention, and quickly she turned and sprinted for the door to the boy's sleeping quarters, and had gotten no further than a step beyond the threshold when something—no, some_one_—small and slight dropped to the soft flooring by her feet.

"Ichigo …" The small girl looked through the door at the boy within, who was paralysed in a position that he couldn't actually see the girl.

She looked hurt, the Soul Reaper noticed. Bruising on her arms, a scratch on the side of her face. Her light hair was mussed up from a blow to the head that had sent her tumbling into something.

"YUZU!" the boy inside cried out. He struggled anew.

"Who's the girl," she asked him.

"She's my sister!" he growled. "Yuzu. Yuzu! What happened?"

The girl tried to pull herself to her feet using the door frame, and dropped back to the floor with soft thud. "Ichigo," she whimpered. "Karin's been … Ichigo—you've got to save her …"

The boy—Ichigo, apparently—struggled again, grunting at the failure. "Let me go! Let me go to my sister!"

"But she's right here. She's fine."

"MY OTHER SISTER!" the Ichigo boy screamed at her.

A terrified scream, blood-curdling high, came from downstairs. The Soul Reaper looked in the direction the young girl had come from and dashed off without another word to the boy.

"_PUT. ME. DOWN!_" Another girl's voice. The Soul Reaper raced down the stairs, leaping down four at a time until she reached the landing on the bottom floor. She grabbed hold of the banister and spun around to face a massive hole that had been punched into the side of the dwelling from the outside.

Through it, she saw what she could only assume was the second Hollow she had been hunting. It was big, more than twice the size of a full-grown man. She could only see its profile, but that was enough. The skull-like mask was curved and smooth, with lightning-patterned purple streaks around the eyes and edging around the lipless grin. What looked to be a shark's fin ran down the Hollow's spin, almost all the way. Its shoulder appeared to be thicker and stronger than the rest of its body, and seemed to blend seamlessly right into the mask. Dark grey stripes were scattered across its body, almost like fish scales. She couldn't see its Hollow hole from the side, but she knew where it was likely to be.

A series of thumps behind her, followed by a heavy crash, drew her attention away from her target and, sword half-drawn; she turned to see the boy getting to his knees at the foot of the steps. He was struggling mightily against the bonds she had forced upon him. That he was able to get to his knees at all was an accomplishment she hadn't been prepared for.

Perhaps, in her haste to bind him for his insolence, she had neglected to imbue the spell with the full power it needed to hold him completely immobile. She wouldn't make that mistake again in the future.

"Stay out of this," she warned him.

"Damn it …" he hissed to himself as he leaned backwards against the wall and managed to get the front of his shoes placed flatly on the floor. With that much bracing, he powered up with his leg muscles, forcing himself to stand.

"Fool! You'll only get in my way!"

"SHUT UP!" he roared defiantly.

She balked at having been spoken to like that by a _human_. She would teach him something about manners later, after she'd dispatched the Hollow that held his sister in a tight, clawed grip. The girl screamed again, but this one sounded more like a scream of defiance and frustration than pain and fear. She was strong, that was for sure. And that she knew something had a hold of her, the Soul Reaper guessed that she too could see the monster.

"Karin!" the Ichigo boy called out to his sister. He struggled anew. Firmly on his feet now, he worked to free his arms. She could see the muscles in his biceps working, trying to force his arms in opposite directions.

"Stop!" she warned him, panicking a little when she remembered one of the things she had learned about fighting a _kidō_ like this back at the academy. "_Kidō_ is too strong for a human to break free from! You'll only cause irreparable damage to your soul!"

Power swirled around the two of them. She chanced a glance out through the hole in the side of the boy's dwelling. The Hollow hadn't moved, and was still leering at the girl it had in its grasp, licking its lips hungrily. She looked back to the human boy. He was still struggling, still pulling with all his might to free himself. But she sensed something new now. He was applying his own soul to the task. How, she couldn't say. But the spiritual energy surrounding him skyrocketed, bathing her in a tingling feeling from being so close.

There was an inaudible snap, a feeling within the Soul Reaper's mind of the power breaking its hold and fizzling out. With a grunt, the boy finally pulled his arms apart and massaged his wrists before looking through the hole and remembering what his goals were.

She tried to stop him, stepping in front with her sword now fully drawn. "Don't do it!" she hissed in warning. He would only get himself killed, well intentions notwithstanding.

The boy grabbed a stool from nearby as he dashed around her and charging out into the night to face the monster.

The Soul Reaper gave chase, holding her sword out to the side with the edge angled behind her. She burst through to the night and circled around to the right to come at the Hollow from behind.

"Ichigo!" the girl called out when she spotted him. "Get me outta here!" She gasped when the monster tightened its grip. Its other hand lashed out and caught Ichigo in the side, sending him sprawling.

He tumbled a few meters down the street before finally coming to a stop on his stomach, the side of his face cut and torn as it lay against the road. The Soul Reaper stopped what she was doing, horrified. The _fool_! She swore under her breath and dodged a kick from the Hollow, jumping around behind what looked to be a large trash bin.

"I found you!" The voice was unexpected. While she knew that Hollows had the potential for speech—she had encountered a few that even apparently loved the sound of their own voice—many did not. The pain and torment of their existence often rendered them mute, save for the angry or starving howls. She peered out from behind the bin as a sound of pleasure rumbled in the thing's throat.

It reeled back its free hand again, closed this time into a fist.

"MOVE!" she shouted.

The Hollow ignored her, flinging its fist forward to where the boy lay on the pavement. At the last second, he dodged out of the way, rolling in the direction of the Hollow.

She sprung into action. When the fist impacted the sidewalk, it cracked the pavement and the Hollow paused to adjust its aim for the next strike. She was faster. Her weapon flashed in the light from the overhead lamp and the waning moon as it dug into the Hollow's extended and vulnerable forearm. Reddish-black blood spilled from the wound as she dragged it through the hardened flesh and darted away to safety.

The Hollow howled, angry or hurt, she didn't care. When she spun, she saw that it had disappeared completely amongst the shadows that should not have hidden anything. It had retreated to its home, temporarily. It would be back, and likely fast, she knew. The girl it had held in its grasp had been released, and caught by her brother before she cracked her skull open on the pavement. She heaved a sigh of relief.

"Karin? The boy shook his sister gently, but she didn't respond. Her eyes were closed, but her breathing was steady. "No …"

"Don't worry," she said reassuringly. She made her way over to his side as he sat up, cradling the unconscious form of his dark-haired younger sibling. "She'll be all right. The Hollow left without devouring either of your sisters' souls. They'll be fine."

"Are you sure?" he said uncertainly. And, for the first time since she had been kicked by him, she sensed and saw real vulnerability in him.

"Yes. I think it's seeking a specific soul, one with a much higher concentration of spirit energy than both of them put together." She stopped and thought about something that hadn't occurred to her before. "The Hollow I faced this morning was hungry for the same soul, now that I think about it. Not the girl's."

"Who? Why?"

"I think it's you that they're after." Tact was never her strong suit. Maybe, though, if he knew that he was the target of the attacks, he would back off and let her do her work. It would all pass so much quicker and smoother if he didn't get in her way. She couldn't afford to keep adjusting her tactics to take a meddling civilian into account so she didn't accidentally kill him.

"Me?"

"I'm just guessing. But it makes sense. Both attacks have been centred around you. Most of your spirit energy was hidden deep within your soul until now, when you needed it to save these two girls. That explains what I was feeling earlier; something that wasn't Hollow, but not anything else I'd ever encountered. And it didn't particularly feel like it was coming from you. But now I'm getting that sense strongly from you.

"Your soul became exposed when you made contact with that girl's spirit. Or maybe it's cumulative with however many spirits you have engaged with. Both of the Hollows were using that girl to track you down."

"Those … _things_ want me?"

A howl rent the air, followed by a fish-like Hollow mask emerging from dense shadows further down the road. The Hollow's body followed it. The cut on its arm had stopped bleeding, but it hadn't healed yet which meant that it hadn't fed while it had been gone.

"It's back! Get your sisters out of here! I'll handle it."

She held her weapon high, ready for the Hollow to charge. Ichigo lay his sister on the road and got to his feet before charging at the Hollow again, this time completely unarmed. The Hollow returned his unspoken challenge with a roar and began its own charge.

"NO!" She was faster. She sprinted ahead of the rash human and shoved him back with her shoulder as the attack bore down. She saw the path of the Hollow's strike and angled her blade.

Pain tore at her, the monster's massive teeth buried to blackened gums in her shoulder and down her arm. She cried out. Blood dripped from her fingertips to a puddle on the road by her feet.

She jerked her blade, caught between the teeth and embedded into the mask of the monster. It bit deep as it was drawn across. The mask cracked, and three teeth were splintered away from the rest of it. She kicked out feebly with her right foot, and was surprised that it had enough power to force the monster back where it thrashed around in agony. The damage was too shallow to be fatal. She had failed. She couldn't win in her condition.

No sooner had she thought that than she fell to her knees, adding to her list of pains. Blood poured freely from her wounds now that the Hollow's teeth, separated from its body, had faded from existence. She felt her spiritual energy flowing from her body along with that red proof of life.

In actual fact, the blood was not even real as humans would understand it. Had she been human, it would have been exactly as it appeared. As a soul, it was merely the perceived representation of her life force leaving her. And she could not stem it. She had never been especially good with any of the healing _kidō_ abilities.

"Soul Reaper!"

Ichigo put his arms around her shoulders as she fell back. Her grip on her blade's hilt slackened a little, but not enough that she dropped it. Its hilt was now stained with her blood. She should have …

"You fool!" she hissed at him when he turned her to face him. "How could you possibly think that you were any match for it? Did you think that it would be over if you gave yourself to it? One soul does not satisfy it for long. After it had finished devouring you, it would have had your sisters regardless to pick its teeth with. Your recklessness is going to result in us all being snacks for that thing."

She shoved away from him roughly. The shock on his face at her words—had they finally sunk in?—meant that she had the time and space to crawl over to the nearby lamp post without any interference from her. She leaned back against the cool metal, revelling in the feel of it. If she could feel that coldness, she was still living.

"I can't fight," she said after trying to lift her blade again. She couldn't. Her arm wouldn't do her bidding anymore. Her first major assignment and she had failed. Her inability to even paralyse this reckless child adequately had resulted in his and his sisters' deaths, and her own. She had brought shame down on her whole family.

Something occurred to her in those final moments. Whispers she had heard. Nothing substantiated. Nothing concrete. But it was hope. It was a chance. They might still survive it. It wasn't without risk. They could all still die anyway.

"Do you want to save them?"

"Of course I do!" he snapped. "What kind of a stupid question is that? If there's a way, tell me how."

"If it works, it'll only be temporary," she advised. He nodded. "You'll have to become a Soul Reaper. It's the only way you can fight it. As a human it will always overpower you."

"Huh?"

She twitched the hand that held her _zanpakutō_ so that the blade rattled against the sidewalk and snagged the boy's attention. He looked down at it. "You need to run this through your heart; the very thing that keeps you alive serves as the core of your soul. With that connection to your soul, I'll be able to pour some of my spiritual energy into you. It should give you the power you need to save your sisters."

The boy stopped approaching her. His brow creased in thought and he looked off to the side for a moment before his gaze darted back to his younger sister, still unconscious some several paces away. He was still between her and the Hollow. The Soul Reaper somehow knew he would make the decision.

"There is risk," she warned him. "I can't guarantee its success. It's never been tried. It could kill you, and your sisters and I would shortly follow."

That seemed to make up his mind. He dropped to his knees in front of her, reached down and gripped the blade of her _zanpakutō_ tightly in his fist. The blade bit into his fingers, and blood began to trickle between them. He pressed the blade's tip against his chest, just left of centre above his heart.

"What is your name, Soul Reaper?" he asked, eyes glistening.

"Rukia," she whispered. "Rukia Kuchiki. And you?"

He took a deep breath, mentally preparing himself for what he was about to do, the risk he was going to take, no doubt. She could not fault that. Untested, she wasn't sure she could talk herself into doing it. "Ichigo Kurosaki. Thank you, Rukia."

He thrust himself forward and the blade pieced his chest, eliciting a pained gasp from him.


	8. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

The pained look that crossed this human child's face was so pitiable it almost brought tears to Rukia's eyes. But she steeled herself against them, and released her _reishi_, her spiritual energy, into her sword. She felt it ebb slowly through the shining blade and into the boy's soul, strengthening it. She could feel the stirrings of his soul preparing to depart his body. It was working.

And then it went wrong.

Suddenly the small trickle she had been allowing to flow into him increased; the gates of the dam flung wide and her energy rushing down her arm and along the blade into Ichigo. She couldn't stop it. She tried to stamp down on it, tried to check the flow, slow it, stopper it. But no matter how much effort she expended on the task, it was for naught. All it seemed to do was drain her energy faster, since she was then trying to use it herself.

A bright flash forced her to turn her head and clamp her eyes shut. And even those methods were insufficient to keep from almost being blinded. The flash somehow got through the miniscule crack between her eyelids and flared. The sensation of rushing wind tingled her skin, and yet she knew there was no wind.

_What have I done_, she thought to herself desperately. The idea had obviously not worked. They were both going to die. She was certain of it. He would die from the blade in his chest, and she would shortly follow when weakness made her and the boy's family easy prey for the Hollow that, while injured, was still fit to fight.

A scream rent the air, and she knew her moment was soon to come. She prepared herself for death, her only regret that she had forever shamed her family name for the incompetence she had displayed on her first mission to the world of the living. Her brother would never forgive her if she lived.

_Maybe it's good that I die, then_, she thought sadly. At least then she wouldn't have to face her brother's scorn.

The light subsided and she finally opened her eyes. Only now was she aware that the energy transfer had ended moments before the brightness had dissipated. She despaired at how much energy she had left. It was almost non-existent; nowhere even close to a tenth of what she had previously possessed.

A little way off the Hollow was on its knees, clutching at the stump of its left arm with the claw of its right. The scream that continued to pierce the blackness of night was coming from the monster, not from Ichigo.

Then she saw him. He stood two meters away, his back to her in a defensive fighting stance that seemed as natural as if he had learned it from seasoned instructors at the Soul Reaper academy.

More surprising yet was that his soul had broken free of his body, as she had sensed would happen. He was clad now in the black shihakushō of a Soul Reaper. At least, it was surprising until she remembered that he had her power now. Naturally that would have reflected itself in the appearance of his soul form.

_How can this have happened?_ she asked herself in despair, feeling again the ridiculously low level of her spiritual energy. In comparison, this Ichigo possessed energy that seemed to dwarf even what she had had before the transfer. _I meant to give him only half of my power. Somehow, this human child has taken nearly _all_ of it!_

"This ends _now_," Ichigo snarled at the Hollow. His left foot shifted imperceptibly, to the Hollow, Rukia thought, but not to her. Such a change could only indicate that he was getting ready to charge.

What kind of being was he; first to steal her powers as he had, and then to face down a Hollow with such foolish courage—even before he'd had her powers? He charged forward.

He wore a lavender-coloured baldric with a large, beige sheath slung diagonally down his back. The sheath was empty, as the sword that would otherwise have been encased was in his right hand and trailing along beside him like a massive steel blank.

_I've never seen a human with spiritual pressure this strong,_ Rukia recalled. _That must have been what was jamming my ability to sense this Hollow earlier. I've never heard of a human that had the strength to break a __kid__ō on his own._

_And I have never, _ever_ seen a Soul Reaper who wielded such a massive __zanpakutō_. It was the biggest she had ever seen in her life, or heard of for that manner. It was easily as long as he was tall, and thicker than the width of his arm. The guard was plain and rectangular and the hilt covered by crimson weave. Pale blue tassels dangled from the end of the hilt. The blade curved slightly, narrowing towards its end to a deadly point.

Ichigo slashed wide with the huge sword in his hand, missing with his first and second strikes but still succeeding in driving it back a few steps.

As Rukia watched, the two of them seemed to dance around each other for a time. Ichigo pressed every chance he got, striking at openings that even Rukia wouldn't have been stupid enough to try pressing. And the Hollow gave more ground with each wild slash, circling around until eventually she could see its back and Ichigo was facing in her direction.

The look on his face …

There was a fury in his eyes that she shied away from, despite the distance between them. She recognised that fury; had seen it a few times in friends and family back home. She herself had felt, what she could only guess from the look on his face, the same way he felt now. His family was in danger of being destroyed—eaten by a monster that craved souls without end. And he was the only thing standing in its way. That was the look on his face: determination

Determination not to fail. Determination not to let the Hollow have what it wanted. Determination to die if necessary to keep it from getting near his sisters or his father.

Rukia used what little strength she had left to crawl over to Ichigo's sister. She picked up the girl and forced her legs to work as she stood, shakily, and retreated. Ichigo's physical body wasn't too far away. If she could make it that far …

She collapsed to her knees, painfully, next to him. The force jostled the dark-haired girl from her arms and she fell atop him, groaning in pain though she was unconscious.

Gently, she pulled the girl to her and laid her down beside her brother. She checked her signs of life, and found her heart and pulse still beating strongly, her breathing even. She was still alive. And she seemed strong, at a glance. Her soul was a resilient one, like her brother's. Then she turned her attention to Ichigo.

Lacking his soul, his body was still maintaining his functions automatically. His breathing and heartbeat were steady. There was a slash in his shirt, where her sword had stabbed through his chest. But when she peeled back the material to look beneath, she saw that there was no sign of that stabbing. The wound had completely closed up, leaving no scar, no residual pressure she could detect.

Of course there would be no pressure, she scolded herself. All of his energy now was in his soul, and that was currently fighting the Hollow.

She turned back to the fight just in time to see Ichigo hack off the right foot of the Hollow in a precise slash that surprised her. She could tell from the way he fought that he had never used a sword in his life, not even a wooden one. And yet that strike had been so precise, so accurate, that she found herself doubting that assumption for a moment. There was just something so naturally graceful about some of his movements.

She knew, of course, that they came from within his soul. He hadn't acquired her knowledge with her power, but somehow the power he had taken from her had tempered him some. Somehow he had taken from that power the ability to fight effectively. Or maybe that had always been there, deep down within the wellspring of his own power, and the influx of hers had simply broken the cage and set that knowledge free.

How in the world could a human possibly fight so well, even with that power?

"You picked the wrong family to chow down on, you freak!" Ichigo screamed as he bore down on the Hollow again following the second dismemberment. "Feel the wrath of my blade!"

He ducked beneath a would-be fatal slash from the creature's remaining arm, rolled and then dodged around the backswing that even Rukia hadn't seen coming. His blade flashed again and the Hollow's fingers were separated from its hand. They dissolved into nothingness before they even touched the street.

The boy made it past the Hollow's reach, got in close to it, and with a violent upwards swing of that massive sword, rent the creature in two.


	9. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Shouting woke him from a slumber he had been quite enjoying. At first, he couldn't even work out what it was supposed to be, so muddled was his brain with drowsiness.

Survival instincts quickly kicked in. His eyes snapped open just in time to see his frequent foe closing in on him, fists clenched and ready to fight. His foe didn't expect him to react so quickly. Nor, it seemed, was he ready when he was slammed heavily to the floor of the bedroom.

"Are you fucking nuts?" Ichigo demanded of his father, his fingers still clutching his father's face as he pushed him harder against the wooden floor. "What kind of sick twisted bastard attacks his own son while he's asleep?"

"You are getting _good_!" Isshin replied with a pained groan. "Looks like there's nothing left for me to teach you, son. Except to watch your language in this house!" He swung upwards with both fists. One of them caught Ichigo's chin and knocked him back onto the bed.

Ichigo shook the dizziness from his head and watched his father get to his feet and dust off the long white coat he was already wearing. "Wait a minute," as something occurred to him. "How are Karin and Yuzu? Are they still hurt?"

His father looked at him blankly for a long moment. Had he even heard the question? It looked as though he either hadn't or hadn't understood why it had been asked in the first place. That only further irritated Ichigo.

Just what kind of father was this man?

"What injuries?" the older man asked. "What are you talking about?"

So he _had_ heard the question, Ichigo realised. Some father, that he didn't even know his daughters had been attacked the previous night by a monster spirit they couldn't even see. Well; perhaps Karin had seen it.

He got to his feet and pushed his father out of the way before leaving his room. The girls' room was across from him and closer to the stairs, so he went there first. He knocked once, then pushed the door open.

They weren't in there. Their beds were messy, like they had been slept in but not yet made. Their desks had open school books and pencils—Yuzu's had a pink diary as well sitting in the corner against the wall. Their school uniforms were hanging from hooks on the walls, and their school bags were slung over the backs of their chairs.

Panic gripped him. Where were the girls?

He felt his father's presence behind him, felt the heat of his breath against his cheek. He ignored it. If the girls weren't here, and weren't downstairs when he checked, where could they have possibly gone? Had the monster last night devoured them before the Soul Reaper had finished transferring her energy to him? Had another come by during the night when they were all sleeping soundly in bed and taken them?

No. He couldn't let himself think that way.

He rushed down the stairs two at a time and spun around the banister on the bottom level. Yuzu wasn't in the kitchen preparing breakfast. Karin wasn't sitting in front of the television waiting for her breakfast. But the hole in the side of the house leading to the front lawn was still there, still gaping proof that the attack had been more than just his wild imagination.

"Holy shit," his father whispered behind him when he cleared the steps as well. "What the hell happened last night?"

"Dad?"

Ichigo spun to the source of the sound. Yuzu popped her head into view through the hole. She was outside. He raced to her side and, gripping her by the shoulders, checked her for any sign of damage, any sign that the creature last night had hurt her. He found nothing, except Karin standing a few meters away kicking at rubble with a bare foot.

"What's wrong Ichigo?" Yuzu asked, looking up into his eyes. Bless her, she was already wearing her apron and holding onto a ladle. Ichigo's only response was to pull her into a tight hug that was accompanied with no verbal response.

"Wow," his father's voice came from behind him. "It's a miracle; a truck ploughs right into the side of the house and not one of us gets so much as a single scratch!"

Ichigo turned to glare at the man.

"What's more miraculous," Karin said blandly as she walked over to where Ichigo and Yuzu stood, "is that not one of us was woken up when it happened."

_I don't get it,_ Ichigo thought to himself as he looked from one to the next. All of them were looking at the damage and muttering to each other what they thought happened and comparing suspicions on why they'd all slept through it. _Their wounds are completely gone._ There wasn't a single bruise on Yuzu, he'd noted. And looking at his other sister, he could see no evidence that she had been in the grip of a skull-faced monster from the underworld.

_They all think a truck did this? Can this be because of that Soul Reaper?_

"Ichigo?" Yuzu said, dragging him from his thoughts. He looked down at her. "You better hurry and eat breakfast, or you're going to be late." She held up her wrist to show the pink kitten watch she was already wearing.

"Too late for that, Yuzu," he said pointedly. "I'm already late.

"Well, get inside and I'll finish something really quick for you, OK?" she said sternly, as if his backtalk wasn't to be tolerated.

"Right," he replied with a weak attempt at a smile. As he followed her into the house, the only thing he could think of as the Soul Reaper, and whether she had managed to return home yet.

* * *

As it was, he was extraordinarily late getting to school. Yuzu was true to her word in whipping up something quick. She fried an couple of eggs into two slices of bread, sprinkled some spices, and then left them on a plate for him to take on his way out of the house.

For his part, Ichigo had quickly showered and brushed his teeth before getting dressed in record time and snatching up his bag with all of his school books in it. He dashed down the stairs once more, snagged the eggs and toast that his sister had left for him, and called out a hasty "see ya" on his way out through the front door.

Why he didn't just slip out through the hole, he didn't know. It would have saved some juggling trying to hold his breakfast, his bag, and opening the door all at once. No doubt, Karin had been entertained by the attempt.

He ran most of the way to school. The second piece of toast with the egg had cooled by the time he reached it and slowed down enough to swallow it whole.

His first stop when he arrived had been the principal's office to explain his lateness with a note hastily scribbled down by his father explaining what had happened the previous night—to his dim, unenlightened imagination, that was. Yuzu and Karin had identical notes for the elementary principal. The principal had thanked him for the explanation and dismissed him, no doubt so he could have the privacy to call Ichigo's father to confirm that the note wasn't forged.

Lunch break was almost over now. He'd decided to skip it altogether anyway and was heading for his next scheduled class.

"Oof!" Turning a corner into the hall he wanted, the air was driven from him when he ran into something solid. A thud, and he looked down to see a girl in his year level on the floor, wincing. _Damn_.

She was a nice girl that he recognised. Her ample breasts and her long, flowing red hair made her the envy of many of the girls at school, and the desire of many of the boys. She was in the standard grey uniform with a grey pleated skirt and blazer and a red bow tie. Blue flower-shaped pins held back her fringe on either side of her face.

Her companion, who was still standing, was perhaps the entire opposite in appearance. She was a little taller than the redhead with hardly any chest—not that Ichigo noticed such things—and short, black hair styled into a spiky disarray.

"Oh, it's you," Ichigo said dumbly while looking down at the redhead he'd inadvertently knocked down. "Hey, Orihime."

"Oh, no!" she said demurely. "I'm sorry!"

"Ichigo!" the other girl, a close friend of his by the name of Tatsuki Arisawa, scolded. "You knock her down and that's all you have to say? Shame!"

"Sorry," he said with a grimace. The best strategy was to accede before she decided to punch him for his carelessness. "Are you going to be all right?" he asked Orihime.

"Yep," she replied quickly with a nod.

Ichigo did the only thing he could think of next: he held out his hand towards her in an unspoken offer to help her back to her feet. He watched her look at the hand blankly for a moment, until she comprehended the offer. Then she looked up into his eyes and he saw the beginnings of panic.

"Oh, no; it's all right. Really," she insisted. She pushed herself to her feet quickly, her eyes darting between Tatsuki and Ichigo. "I –I–I–I just remembered that I h–have volleyball. Yes. Volleyball. See ya!" She turned and ran back the way she and Tatsuki had come from, leaving her books on the floor where they'd fallen.

Sighing, Ichigo bent and started picking them up.

"Orihime!" Tatsuki called out after her.

"What's up with her?" Ichigo asked. He stood back up after collecting the last book and handed them to the outstretched hand of his friend.

"Oh, I wonder," she replied, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. Ichigo couldn't discern the reason for the sarcasm, though. Was she taking a shot at him, or at Orihime? Either way, it wasn't a particularly nice thing to do. "Could be your ugly face. By the way; why are you so late? Lunch is pretty much over."

Ichigo sighed, resisting the urge to runs his hand over his face as they started down the hall. "Don't worry about it. I'll tell you later."

"Oh. Well in that case I'll see you later, then. I've got volleyball as well." When they got to the room where Ichigo was to attend his next class, Tatsuki waved and continued on.

He watched her go for a few moments before he pushed open the door and stepped inside. Since the lunch break hadn't yet officially ended, the room was still mostly empty. But there were a few people around seated at tables waiting for class to start. Gathered at the table he usually sat at were three of his friends.

Keigo was sitting on the edge of the table in front of Ichigo's—his own, actually—and was kicking a leg idly as he chatted with the other two. His brown hair looked like it hadn't been tamed, but it looked like that every day. Mizuiro was standing in front of the windows, his short black hair looking silken under the light and brushed into a style Ichigo wasn't fond of, but neither did he dislike it. He nodded absently at something Keigo had said, without appearing to actually have heard it.

The third of them was Chad. Rather, he was called Yasutora Sado, and Chad was just what everyone called him. He just looked more like a Chad than a Yasutora. He was taller than Ichigo by more than a head, had an olive complexion and dark brown hair that gave away his heritage as Hispanic rather than Asian, and brown eyes that took in everything without appearing to. He was usually the quiet type, not given to saying much even when spoken to directly. But that was something about him that Ichigo found quite endearing.

"Hey Ichigo," Keigo called to him when his approach was noticed. Ichigo nodded and sat down, putting his bag on the table in front of him. "I heard a truck ran into your house last night."

How he could have heard that when Ichigo hadn't yet told anyone at school was anyone's guess. But Keigo had a habit of learning just about anything regarding just about anyone of any consequence to him. He'd probably passed by Ichigo's place on the way to school and had seen the damage for himself. Or he'd probably overheard the principal on the phone after Ichigo had been dismissed. Who knew?

"Pretty much."

"Cleaned it all up yet?" Mizuiro asked.

"Are you kidding?" Ichigo replied incredulously. "That's going to take forever. I high-tailed it out of the house as soon as I could before my dad roped me into helping him out. I'm sure the girls will have taken off just as quick."

"Need any help?" This came from Ichigo's right and took him by surprise. He looked up, and up, and up to see Chad looking down at him.

"That's OK," Ichigo replied, gesturing aimlessly.

"Yeah, Chad," Keigo started with a chuckle, "you might end up bringing the whole house down on their heads, you know?"

Changing the topic, Ichigo asked "Got to school just in time, though." He didn't entirely mean it as it sounded.

Keigo seemed to understand that right away. He heaved a despondent sigh. "Language Lab. Best class of the curriculum," he said without meaning it.

Ichigo opened his mouth to speak when a familiar voice interrupted from behind him. "Hello," it started. He closed his eyes, pretending not to notice it. Maybe they would go away if he just ignored them. "Which one of you is Ichigo Kurosaki?"

He started. Why word it like that? The other three couldn't—

He spun to see the Soul Reaper standing there, not two paces from where he was seated. She was in the grey uniform of his school, complete with white shirt and red bow tie. Gone was the black kimono he had seen on her the previous day. Gone was the sheath and sword at her hip and the waraji on her feet. She was wearing proper clothes, and stood there with her hands clasped over a small backpack in front of her.

"My name is Rukia," she said with a generous smile. "I'll be sitting next to you from now on."

"No fucking way," he gasped in shock. What the hell was she doing here? Why the hell hadn't she gone back home to her Soul Society, or whatever it was called? She couldn't possibly have decided to torment him further, surely?

"Hey, Ichigo; what's wrong with you?" Keigo asked, completely clueless to the scene playing out before him. He couldn't know that there was a spirit woman standing there trying to play the part of a demure schoolgirl. Nor could he know just how disturbed Ichigo was by it, unless his face was giving that away.

"You two know each other?" Chad asked.

"Of course not," the Soul Reaper, Rukia, replied cheerfully. "We've never met before. Isn't that right, Ichigo?" She shot him a dark look so plain that he got the message that he was expected to play along. But why?

Hang on.

"Oh, I heard about a new transfer student this morning when I came in. This must be her," Mizuiro pointed out. Ichigo contained another gasp. Could they see her? How? She had told him only people with high spiritual awareness could see Soul Reapers … and none of Ichigo's friends had any of that. They'd never been able to see spirits before.

But if Keigo's skill was in finding anything about people that mattered to him, Mizuiro's skill differed in that his focus was women. Any girl transferring into Karakura High he seemed to know about as soon as the information was processed through the system. At times, it appeared as though he knew more about them than anyone at a new school ought to have a right to. Ichigo suspected that his womanising little friend was going through school transcripts that no fifteen-year-old should even have been able to access.

"Nice to meet you," Keigo said smoothly.

Rukia held her hand out to Ichigo. He looked down at it, and was glad he did so first before actually saying something he now knew he'd regret later. Written on it was a message in tiny enough lettering to fit, but not so small that he couldn't read I t.

_Make a scene and I'll kill everyone in the room._

He looked up at her, horrified at the implications. Would she really? He vaguely remembered her saying something about not killing humans without orders to do so. Did that extend to anyone that found out about her existence and what she was if outed by Ichigo?

He wasn't willing to risk their lives on calling a bluff, if it was a bluff.

She seemed to read those thoughts as they ran through his mind. She smiled slyly at him as he ran it over again, just to be sure. Then he took her hand and shook it with a quick "nice to meet you".

"All right, students. Take your seats."


	10. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Apparently, lunch break couldn't come fast enough for the human boy. Rukia derived a giddy pleasure in watching him tap his foot against the crossbar under his table silently throughout the whole of the Languages lesson as he waited.

No doubt he wanted to interrogate her. The thought almost made her laugh aloud: interrogated by a human child. The thought was ludicrous, to say the least. And yet she watched him out of the corner of her eye, shooting him a smile or a wink every time he looked at her directly just to torment him that little bit more.

With how rash he had been the previous night in fighting the Hollow, she half expected him to pick her up by the scruff of her blazer and drag her out of the class any minute. She was only mildly disappointed that he somehow found the strength to keep his rashness under control for the whole hour.

Aside from her main focus, she distracted herself here and there by scribbling down whatever notes the teacher wrote up on the board or copying down things that he had said that might be important to the lesson. Though she devoted most of her attention to Ichigo, she listened enough to the teacher that if she were asked a question she could answer it without missing a beat.

Posing as what a few of her peers here had called a "transfer student" was much easier than classes at the Soul Reaper academy, from which she had graduated decades ago. In fact, by comparison, human schools were rather boring.

When the bell for lunch finally rang, Rukia took her time packing her books and pencils back into her bag while Ichigo stuffed his away and stormed out without a word to anyone.

She watched him until he was out of sight before turning to three friends he had been chatting with before she had surprised him with her appearance. The big, tall one looked down at her and ventured a small smile before he too left. The one with the messy brown hair grinned and clapped her on the shoulder as he went past, welcoming her again. The little one said nothing, but did look her up and down as he left the room.

Something about that unnerved her a little, but she made an effort not to show it. After all, he was a human child. New things often caught their attention. And he was a boy. New girls often caught _their_ attention.

She caught up with Ichigo in the yard a few minutes later. He was standing against the gym entrance with his eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Hello again, Ichigo," she said as she approached. The message she had scribbled on her hand in spirit ink had since been cleaned away. That only Ichigo had reacted to it when she'd proffered her hand proved that out of he and the other three, only he had seen it. That was a good sign.

He opened his eyes and looked up at her when she stopped a meter away from where he stood. "All right you freaky little nut-job," he started, "what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Oh, how scary!" she said in mock surprise. "You're such a brute, treating the new girl like that. Jeepers; you're not going to hurt me, are you?" she cringed and backed away a step, all for show.

"First of all. No one says 'jeepers' anymore. And secondly, you can knock it off with that goody-two-shoes act, OK?"

Rukia huffed. "Well, I think it's pretty good considering that I learned it overnight."

"Fine," the boy replied irritably. She smiled at the thought that she was getting under his skin. After what he had done to her, it was the least he deserved. "Forget it. Tell me what exactly you're doing here anyway. Weren't you supposed to be going back to your Soul Society, or whatever it was?"

Suddenly her good mood soured and there was a foul taste in the back of her throat. Anger reared its head and she glared at him with as much contempt as she could muster. "I can't. Only Soul Reapers can go back to the Soul Society. I haven't got the power to anymore."

"Why not?"

Did he seriously not know? "Last night I lost almost all of my power. I only meant to give you half, but you absorbed far more than I planned, or even anticipated that you would be capable of. You left me with nothing even worth a damn. With what power I have no I wouldn't even qualify as a Soul Reaper anymore."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said. From the tone in his voice, she gathered that he had been unaware of that until now. His questions hadn't been mocking, they'd been earnest. And for some reason he felt insanely guilty about what had happened.

"To put it simply," she started, irritated still, "thanks to you; for the time being, I'm stuck in this ridiculous gigai."

"What the hell is a gigai?"

She sighed. "I forgot. You're an ignorant child.

"A gigai is a temporary vessel for Soul Reapers. In emergencies, our souls can reside within a gigai while we heal. In part, they serve to contain spiritual energy from escaping wounds that will take time to heal. For all intents and purposes, I'm human for the time being. I can be seen and can interact with people that can't perceive the spiritual realm like you can."

"So that's how they were able to see you in class."

"Precisely." She leaned against the wall beside him and dropped her bag to the ground by her feet. "And so until all of my powers come back, I'm going to need you to perform my duties in my stead. It's only natural, since now you possess the strength and abilities of a Soul Reaper. You don't really have any right to refu—"

"No way!" he said at once, pushing off from the wall and turning to her with his arms crossed.

She looked up at him. "Excuse me?" she said dangerously.

"I said no. Are you hard of hearing, Soul Reaper? My monster fighting days are over. That Hollow I destroyed was a one-time deal."

"Don't be stupid," she snapped, glaring again. "You did just fine yesterday. In fact, you did better than fine for someone that's never wielded a sword before, let alone fought a Hollow."

"That was only because it was in defence of my sisters. I fought to keep them safe. I'm not going to go helping every stranger I see. Sorry to disappoint you."

He turned to go, leaving her leaning against the wall on her own, glaring at his back. "I see." She dug an azure-coloured, fingerless glove out from under her blazer as she watched him walking away from her and stretched the material over her left hand. "I guess there's no other choice."

She ran after him, leaving her bag exactly where it was. Hearing her footsteps, he started to turn towards her. No sooner had he started than her palm made full contact with his head. She didn't have to do much from there except push. The glove had its own power. If it had required any from her, it would likely be useless. So she pushed.

She saw the difference it made. Her arm became insubstantial and went right through the boy's thick skull, pushing his soul form free bit by bit. When his head was free, it got easier, and the rest of him followed much more quickly. His soul form, identical to his physical one, tumbled to the ground, and Rukia caught his now-limp body in her arms before it hit the ground.

He was heavier than she expected. In her soul form, she wouldn't have had any issues in lifting. But her gigai was very human in terms of strength. More resilient than humans, yes, but weak just like them.

"Will you help me with this?" she demanded when Ichigo started to stand.

He turned and looked down at her trying to lift his body all on her own, and struggling. "What the hell happened to my body? What the hell do you just do to me?" he shouted.

"Just help!" she replied angrily. Together, they dragged his body into a storage cupboard inside the gym and closed it in, hopefully to remain undisturbed until they returned. "Now follow me."

* * *

They walked for some time before Ichigo got sick of the quiet. His day couldn't possibly have gotten any worse. Actually, it had started off more or less OK, aside from the gaping hole in the side of his house. But the Soul Reaper, Rukia, showing up at his school disguised as a transfer student … that was something that he hadn't expected. It spun his mind.

How was he supposed to get rid of her, now that she was claiming she would stick with him until he started doing her job for her? He had no intention of doing a Soul Reaper's work—none at all. Like he'd told her; he'd only done it last night because Yuzu and Karin were the ones being threatened by the Hollow creature.

Granted, he did offer comfort to some of the spirits he saw around, like the girl that had been run over. But that was all it was. Comfort. How could he bring himself to putting his life on the line every time he saw a Hollow attacking a spirit or a stranger? Why should he risk his own life? Gaining Rukia's powers was a temporary arrangement, and the sooner he was shot of them and back to his regular boring spirit-seeing self, the better. He would be rid of her, rid of this burden that she was trying to push on him.

"You want to tell me exactly where we're going?" he asked her all of a sudden. They'd long left the school grounds and were heading towards the east part of town. There was a park in those parts where he and his sisters used to play, if he remembered correctly. "We should be getting back to school. We still have another class to attend after lunch."

"We're getting close," Rukia replied with a glance over her shoulder.

He frowned. "Close to what?" he demanded.

Her hand dipped into the pocket of her uniform's blazer and returned to sight clutching a sky-blue cell phone. A tiny plush rabbit hung from a tassel tied to a knot-slot in the phone's exterior. She flipped the phone open, pressed a button, and checked whatever it was that popped up on the screen.

"Latest orders from the Soul Society," she replied. "Apparently there's a spirit at the park a block ahead that hasn't crossed over yet."

Ichigo huffed. "So?"

"Have you forgotten already that Hollows are attracted to spirits, or people with high spiritual energy? This spirit that hasn't crossed over is that of a young child."

Ichigo increased his pace until he was side-by-side with her. "No. I haven't forgotten. How is that my problem, though? And why the hell am I wearing this ridiculous kimono?"

"You are a Soul Reaper now, boy," Rukia said harshly, making him frown again. "With that comes responsibility. Your responsibility to the Wholes is to help them pass over to the Soul Society if they haven't or can't manage it on their own. Your duty is to make sure that they never have to experience the horror of a Hollow attack like your sisters did last night."

"I guess …"

"You can't discriminate with the spirits you encounter, Ichigo." Her voice was softer now, and when she looked at him she at least wasn't frowning or glaring. "If you encounter a Whole, you perform konsō. If you encounter a Hollow, you take it down. It's as simple as that."

"I'm not putting my life on the line for strangers," he insisted.

Rukia stopped, gripped his arm, and whirled him around to face her. She was quite a bit shorter than he, however, and he quite literally had to look down to meet her gaze. Ironically, it gave him a sense of what Chad must feel like when he spoke to his friends.

"Don't be a selfish child," she snapped. "What gives you the right to decide who deserves to be saved? How would you feel today if I had made the choice to abandon you and your family? What if I hadn't shown up to help you and that girl yesterday morning? What if, after that Hollow had injured me, I'd just retreated back to the Soul Society to heal up and abandoned you and your sisters to its mercy? Would that have made me any better than the Hollow that sought to devour your souls?"

Ichigo flushed, mildly ashamed, and mumbled an apology. "The last thing you're thinking about is duty, though," he pointed out. "When you see someone being attacked, you're not just going to sit by and watch it happen while sipping lemonade."

"What's lemonade?"

"That's not important!" Ichigo waved off the matter. "My point is when you see someone, or something, attacking someone else, you act. You do what is right."

"So you're making my point for me. I hope you know that."

"I'm not. I'm saying that I have no intention of running around town searching for spirits that need my help." He considered for a moment, then nodded. "Sure, if I happen across a spirit that needs my help, I'll help. But why should I actively seek them out? I want my life, not yours."

"I see …" Something about her tone, however, made it sound like she didn't. She turned her head in the direction they had been walking, and then pointed with her left hand. "See him?"

Instinct made him look before reason told him not to.

Bitch.

Down the street walking towards them with hands in pockets and head down was a little boy, no older than maybe six years. Like other spirits Ichigo had seen prior to Rukia and the Hollows inserting themselves into his life, the boy was semi translucent. There was substance, but at the same time there wasn't. He could see through the child to the street behind. The boy didn't look up once while he walked.

This was a spirit who had been dead long enough to know that nothing in the world of life could harm him anymore.

"That's unfair," Ichigo snapped accusingly at Rukia, "and you know it."

"By your own rules, you can see him so you should help him," she responded as if he hadn't just complained. "And you cannot claim that he isn't in distress. Just to take in his appearance, he's obviously upset, and lonely besides. Even if you ignored that, he's still under constant threat of a Hollow attack. I don't know how long he has eluded attacks so far, or gone unnoticed by Hollows walking your world in search of souls, but I guarantee it won't be forever."

"We're going to have words about your treachery at some point, you realise?" he warned her. She nodded and he started towards the spirit.

"Hey, kid," he said, dropping to his knees before the boy. The child froze all of a sudden, looking up at him through eyes wide with terror. His hands came out from the pockets to hang by his sides loosely. The loneliness didn't quite leave his expression, even though he now looked quite afraid of the person who had unexpectedly been able to see him.

"Can you see me?" the child asked quietly.

"I can," Ichigo assured him. "How long has it been since anyone has been able to speak to you?"

"A long time. I lost count of the days." Ichigo felt a pang of sympathy for the child. He resolved that, at least in this instance, Rukia was right. He did have a duty to help the spirits find peace.

After all, how many times had he asked himself while visiting the girl's spirit what he could do to help her pass on? So now that he had the power to do so, why was he reluctant to use it? It was rather selfish, he knew. But his duty to protect his family was pretty important to him—perhaps more so than any obligation he might feel to the spirits.

"What about your mummy and daddy? Where are they?" Ichigo asked, looking around.

"I can't find them. We were in the park. There was a loud bang. Mummy and Daddy fell down. I think they were hurt. Then I fell down too, and when I got up I found out I wasn't hungry or thirsty anymore."

"Sounds pretty lonely without your Mum and Dad around," Ichigo said with a sympathetic smile. "Would you like to see them again?"

"Oh, yes! Yes, please! Do you know where they are?"

"They're in a place called the Soul Society," Rukia said from over his shoulder. He hadn't even heard her catch up to him. "It's a wonderful place where you'll never have anything to fear ever again. You won't ever get hungry or thirsty."

The child's eyes grew wide with wonder. "You can see me too?" he whispered. Rukia nodded.

"Would you like to go to the Soul Society?" Ichigo asked. "To see your Mummy and Daddy again?" The child nodded, and Ichigo turned to Rukia. "How do I do this?" he asked.

"You'll need your zanpakutō," she replied.

"My what?"

"The sword. It's called a zanpakutō. You need to touch the end of the hilt to the child's head and release a little of your spiritual energy into it."

Ichigo reached over his shoulder and gripped the thick handle of the massive sword strapped by a baldric to his back. He drew it from its sheath and, careful not to frighten the child, drew it around in front of him. For the first time did he notice the intricate symbols carved into the bottom of the hilt that spelled the word _konsō_.

"Don't be afraid," he assured the spirit, seeing the worried look in the boy's eyes as he looked at the giant sword. "It won't hurt you," he added with a questioning look to Rukia. She nodded with a small smile to let him know he hadn't lied. He contained the relieved sigh at that.

"Thank you, Mister," the boy said. Ichigo nodded and held the sword up, then pressed the symbols on the end of the hilt to the boy's forehead gently.

Then he thought for a moment. She had said something about releasing some of his energy into the sword. But for the life of him, he couldn't work out how to do that. A long moment passed in which nothing happened before he felt a tingling in the air and the child began to disappear.

When he was long gone, replaced with one of those midnight-black, unmarked butterflies he had seen preceding Rukia's arrival in his bedroom the previous night, he finally sighed in relief. He had honestly worried for a moment that he was doing something wrong. He had been unprepared for the task, and because of the unexpected nature of it, he'd not had the opportunity to even ask how to release his energy. But somehow he'd done it. Had it just been a matter of wanting to do it that made it happen?

Possibly.

"You did that quite beautifully," Rukia said softly, putting a hand on his shoulder. "And it's not a kimono. It's called a shihakushō. It's the standard uniform of a Soul Reaper."

"Whatever," Ichigo said, dismissing the last. He shrugged off her hand, got back to his feet, and slid the sword home in its sheath again. "I'm gone." And he left her standing there, alone.


	11. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

He watched her. Gone were the days when he could hold her, or have her look at him with adoring affection. Gone were the days when they would laugh together or cry together. He would never again be able to feel the soft silkiness of her hair or the gentle touch of her hand as she wished him a good day at work.

Gone were the days when they would eat together after a long day, when she would experiment with different foods and he would concede to being her willing guinea pig.

Gone were the days when he would hold her hand as they walked across the street, looking both ways to make sure that there would be no danger first.

Gone were the days when he could just sit with her in front of the television watching children's programmes and laughing at the silly jokes and childish pranks.

Sora was dead, but he would not be forgotten. Death had not kept him from his promise never to leave his sister's side. Death would not keep him from making sure that she would be happy. All it had done was robbed them of each other.

He swung his legs idly in tune with a beat in his head while he gazed down through the open window of his sister, doing her homework like a dutiful teenage girl should. He would do anything to be down there helping her through her math right now. She hadn't gotten any better at the subject since he'd been alive.

Suddenly, the girl got up and, with a look down at the street; she closed her window and the curtains, shutting out his view. He sighed, content for the night to wait until morning when she would wake and start preparing her breakfast and throwing something together for her school lunch.

He got to his feet atop the roof from which he watched her and turned to go.

Pain lanced unexpectedly through his left arm, followed by a tightening sensation. He looked down to see what looked at first glance to be a thick python wrapped around his upper arm. But on closer inspection, he saw that it wasn't a snake at all, but a thick, scaly tentacle.

He whirled around to face the source and saw something large and hidden by the night some distance away. Another dark shape was beside it, and both seemed to be hovering in the air much as he found he sometimes could if he concentrated. Another tentacle shot out from those dark shapes, gripping his right arm tightly.

More lashed out at him, wrapping his legs and torso in bonds he struggled in vain to escape. Whatever they were, they had him firmly in their grip. He could do nothing to get free. In fact, he wagered that his best bet was simply to wait until they slackened their grip. He wasn't even sure that they would do that. It was a long shot, at best.

The world went dark around him without warning. He found it hard to breathe—like the dead could breathe at all. It was a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with the tentacles that gripped him. His mind spun, a whirlwind of sensation carrying him on, to where he had no clue.

Desert replaced blackness. It was barren and white, with a starless sky lit by a waxing moon—odd, he thought, since the moon only a moment ago had been in the waning phase. Columns of rock jutted up for hundreds of meters around him in the distance. A few trees without leaves that looked like they too were made from stone stuck up from the sand around him.

"Where—"

"Mortal flesh," a deep, rumbling voice came from the barrenness. He saw a massive shadow protruding from behind one of the nearest of the stone pillars, but he could not see what cast the shadow. "Take him!"


	12. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

"Hear my voice, oh lord. Help your humble child understand why she was born. And, if your divine will wishes it, summon her back to your side. I—"

"Would you shut up already," Ichigo snapped at her. Instantly, Rukia's cheerfulness disintegrated and she put down the book from which she was reading aloud to glare at him.

The late afternoon sun cast a yellow-orange hue over the street as Ichigo and Rukia made their way home from school two days after Ichigo's first konsō. It was a warm afternoon, and Rukia was, for once, content not to mention his excellent konsō performance of the other day, in favour of other pursuits.

In fact, they had said nothing to each other of Soul Reapers and duty and responsibility since that day. Ichigo had done his best to avoid her altogether. And she was happy to let him, taking her lunch on a high tree branch where she could look down over the school grounds and where no one would bother her.

"What is your problem, cretin?" she demanded. "I'm studying up on contemporary language."

"Well," Ichigo started, "you're off by a few centuries."

Rukia slammed the book shut angrily, still glaring at him. Useless child had no sense of appreciation for some of the humans' best works of literature. Even if it was out of date like he claimed it was, he should still have been able to appreciate it all the same. But no. He'd demanded silence during her recital. Typical, ignorant human.

"So, tell me …" Ichigo started as they walked. "How long do you plan on following me around? Just for confirmation."

"Until you accept your responsibility as a Soul Reaper," Rukia told him without pause.

He sighed. "Right. Whatever."

As they rounded a corner, the sound of screeching tyres and the sight of a car taking off down the street caught their attention. Rukia stared in wonder. Automated vehicles such as those had been fascinating to her since she'd arrived here. Apparently they had been around for nearly a century. But since this was her first time in the World of the Living, it was her first experience with such vehicles. She wondered idly how they worked without horses.

However, she had missed noticing something that Ichigo _had_ noticed. It wasn't until he drew her attention to it by racing over that she saw a girl in the street, clutching at an ankle with a couple of bags of groceries that had been dropped. It looked as if she had been injured.d

"Fucking idiot drivers!" Ichigo hissed. "Hey, Orihime."

"Ichigo, hi," the girl named Orihime replied.

"Did that idiot just run into you?" Rukia detected a great deal of concern for this girl in the boy's tone. Were they close?

"Oh," the redheaded girl said thoughtfully. "Um … maybe?"

"What do you mean 'maybe'?" Ichigo demanded. "Are you going to be OK?"

The girl instantly sprung to her feet at the question, as if to prove that she was fine. Rukia had to admit that the grace she had done so proved the point splendidly. She might have been clutching her ankle a moment ago as if in pain, but now she looked like she felt no pain at all. That was very interesting.

"Uh huh," she stated cheerfully. "It was just a little bump. Don't worry. I'm fine. I promise."

Ichigo looked her up and down, but not in the same manner the dark haired boy in class had done so to Rukia a couple of days ago. This was more of an appraisal, as if he was looking her over for injuries that might disprove her claim of being fine.

"Are you sure you're OK?" he asked, the worry back in his voice. "Where'd that car go? I'll give the idiot a piece of my mind."

The girl looked around before pointing down the street in a direction that _wasn't_ where the car had gone. "It drove away?"

"Orihime!" Ichigo reprimanded.

"I'm sorry."

The boy sighed and ran a hand through his already unkempt hair. "Well, that's all right, I guess. As long as you're OK."

The girl nodded and then looked at Rukia. "Hello. Rukia, right?"

"That's right," Rukia replied stiffly. "And who the hell are—ow!" She felt a hand connect lightly with the back of her head.

"She's in our class at school, you idiot!" Ichigo hissed, too low for the other girl to hear. "Her name is Orihime Inoue. She sits behind you. Get your head out of your ass."

"Oh …" She could just barely contain rolling her eyes. "Of course. Orihime, how are you." She lifted the hem of her skirt an inch and bowed in greeting.

Orihime Inoue greeted her in the same fashion with an "I'm great, thank you."

"It appears you have been shopping."

"What? Oh! That's right! Dinner!" She turned and bent at the waist to pick up the shopping bags and to scoop what had fallen out of them back in. When she straightened and faced them again, she had the bags all together in her left hand while in her right she twirled a fresh leek. "My leeks, bananas, butter and bean jam seem to have made it as well," she said with a nervous giggle.

"Yuck," Rukia heard Ichigo mutter under his breath. "I don't even want to know what she's going to make with that stuff."

But he'd already lost her attention. Rukia was staring at a dark mark on Orihime's left leg, visible just below the yellow flower-patterned skirt that stopped at mid-calf. The marks were suspicious, almost like strips on her leg, but oddly spaced. It wasn't until she squatted in place to get a closer look that it dawned on her why they were spaced so unevenly and at odd angles.

Finger marks. Bruises, really. They were already darkening a bit, and promised to get darker before the day was completely done.

"How did you get that bruise on your leg?" she asked Orihime.

"What bruise?" She looked down at her leg, shifting her skirt's hem away for a moment so she could see it clearly. "Oh! I guess it happened just now when that car ran into me."

"Jeez," Ichigo huffed. "Does it hurt?"

"A little. But I'm OK," she assured them both.

"Are you sure?" Ichigo persisted. Rukia shot him a glance before returning her gaze to the bruise.

She couldn't shake the feeling that there was something _off_ about that mark. It didn't match her story. But then, the girl had admitted to being unsure how she'd gotten it. If she couldn't see spirits, she would have been unaware of any Hollow making a grab for her. It might have just attributed it to a muscle spasm or having bumped into something.

Or being hit by a car.

"Uh," she started, catching Rukia's attention. "What's the matter, Rukia? Anything wrong?"

"Well; you take care," the Soul Reaper said, getting back to her feet and smiling cheerfully.

"Thanks," Orihime replied, just as cheerful.

"Do you want me to walk you home?" Ichigo offered her.

Rukia watched the girl's face turn an interesting shade of red as she stammered to get out a reply. "I'm OK. Really. See ya!" And then she was off, across the crossing to the other side of the road as soon as it was safe and then down the street.

Ichigo sighed as they watched her moving off. "She needs to take better care of herself. Come on. Let's go."

But Rukia couldn't quite dismiss that bruise. It had to be a Hollow's mark. She couldn't ignore that possibility. And Ichigo would have to be the one to deal with it if she was right, since she was powerless and could do nothing.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Ichigo's voice dragged her thoughts back to the present. She noticed that the sun had gone down a little further now. Shadows from buildings had extended long fingers across the streets to the other side. Ichigo's already tall shadow was now easily three times his height. Rukia's was likewise.

"That girl …"

"Orihime?"

"Are you especially close to her?"

"Not really," he replied. "I barely know her. We don't really talk that much, but she's friends with a good buddy of mine, so I see her around a bit. Although …"

"Yes?" Rukia's interest peaked.

"A few years back, her older brother was in a terrible accident." Pause. Frown. "He died at our clinic."

"What?" Interesting.

"He was in a car wreck. Lot of that going around, I notice. But he was Orihime's only family. I never realised that the girl I saw that night was her until recently."

"How in tune to the spirit realm were you at the time?"

"Not as much as I am now," he said with a shrug of indifference. They rounded a corner onto another street and kept walking. "I mean, it's really only very recently that I've been able to see and communicate with the spirit realm."

_Just as I thought,_ Rukia thought to herself, stroking her chin with a finger.

"Why? What are you thinking?"

_I'm thinking that it was a Hollow that left that bruise on her leg, not an out of control vehicle. And from what you've just told me, I'm thinking it's very likely that it could be this brother you spoke of that died._ Instead, what she said was "Nothing. I'll see you later."

"Huh? Hey; where are you going?"

"Home," she replied matter-of-factly.

"I thought you said you couldn't go back because I'd sapped all of your power?" he questioned. Sharp boy. But a massive contradiction with himself. Sometimes he was so stupid and foolish and reckless, and at other times he was intelligent and wise and kind.

She had trouble reconciling those two sides to him. She was used to the people she knew being straightforward and direct.

"I meant the place that I'm staying in the World of the Living. You don't honestly think I'd be living on the streets like some common filth, do you?"

"Well, no. I guess not. So where are you staying?"

"You don't really want to know," she told him. She could hear in his tone of voice that he didn't really care. He was asking out of some misguided concept of manners that didn't really apply in this situation.

"Not really, no," he admitted with a shrug.

"Then don't ask."


	13. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

Ichigo's bedroom door burst open without warning, and the first thought that crossed his mind was "so much for my quiet night."

Sighing, he deposited the manga he'd been reading in his lap, still open to the page he'd been on, and turned to the door. Standing there was Yuzu, sans-apron. Her brow was knitted in thought and she chewed absently on her bottom lip.

"Hey, Ichigo," she started, "you haven't seen my yellow pajamas have you?"

He sighed again and ran a hand over his face. "Yuzu … how many times do I have to ask you to _knock_ before you come in here? In fact—knock before you enter _any_ bedroom."

She adopted a sulky expression, her eyebrows drawing up and her lips pushing out a little while she put her fists against her hips. "Well, I'm sorry I asked! You've been so mean ever since you started high school, you know that?"

"No I haven't," Ichigo replied with a blank stare. "And no; I haven't seen your yellow pajamas, and I don't know where they could be."

The pouty expression disappeared in the blink of an eye, and she tapped a fingertip against her chin. "That's just a little bit odd. One of my dresses has gone missing, too. The white and blue one. You know—the one I like."

"You like all of them," Ichigo reminded her.

"Well, yes," she said, smiling. "But I like the white and blue one more. I don't suppose you've seen that one either?"

"Why do you feel the need to ask me about every little thing?" he asked, exasperated. "Do I look like I give a damn?"

His sister's eyes went wide and her mouth dropped in shock. It was a comical look on her. But it was soon replaced by a scowl. "Fine! Good night!" Then she slammed the door and left.

That left Ichigo on his own. And that was just perfectly fine with him, he decided as he picked up the manga and resumed reading from where he had left off.

He finished it after a few pages and put it down on his desk before laying down in bed, deciding that sleep would be called for after the day he'd had. Not that it was overly challenging, mind. But he hadn't woken up that morning expecting to run into Rukia at his school, nor find out that she was now pretending to be human because he had her power and couldn't return home, nor that he would have to perform some sort of soul burial for the spirit of a child in the park.

He held out a hand in front of his face, palm up and fingers splayed as he examined it as best he could. He flexed his fingers a few times, trying to reach for some hidden power within him.

He hadn't felt different all weekend since absorbing Rukia's power. Could he really take her at her word that he had? Then he remembered wielding that massive sword, cleaving the Hollow that had threatened his sisters in two with it. How could he have done that if he hadn't had her power? The sword that Rukia wielded was much, much smaller than the one he had used, so he was without a doubt that it hadn't been hers.

But where had it come from? Was it just an extension of the Soul Reaper's spiritual powers that was manifest in their form? That seemed likely.

And yet, he wasn't a true Soul Reaper. He was only a stand in, and only for that night. Well, at least he had thought so. If she hadn't gotten her powers back, and she seemed to think that he still had them, then that was highly likely.

Then again, he could just be dreaming the whole thing up. He might wake up in the morning and find out that the past couple of days had never really happened. Wouldn't that be something?

A faint beeping sound caught his attention.

"Huh?" he said to himself. "What's that?"

He listened to it carefully. It was a high-toned triple beep he recognised as coming from a cell phone. But his was switched off, and his sisters' room was across the hall from him so even if it was one of their phones he'd not have heard it.

Actually, when he thought about it, it sounded like it was coming from within his own room. He looked over to his desk where his phone sat, still switched off and silent as it should be. He frowned and sat up, wondering where the beeping could possibly be coming from.

Suddenly, his wardrobe door slid aside with enough force that it banged against the frame loudly. The only reason it didn't rebound and slide back across was because the person within was holding it open. She had suspiciously familiar dark hair and eyes, and her petite form was clad in the checked yellow pajamas his sister had just finished asking him about.

"Ichigo!" Rukia said.

"AH!" He couldn't help the cry of surprise. It was instinct. "What the fuck? What are you doing in there? Are those Yuzu's PJs you're wearing? Little thief!"

The small girl—or woman, if her story about being much older than him was to be believed—leapt deftly from the shelf inside the wardrobe where she'd set up the rolled up spare mattresses as a bed, of sorts. She quickly jammed her hand into a fingerless glove that was alternating shades of blue with some white and black. "I'll explain later," she said quickly, stepping over to him. She seemed frantic to him. After seeing how she handled Hollows, he couldn't imagine that of her.

"What is that?" he said, pointing at the glove.

"We're not alone," she said quickly, closing the distance.

"Wait …" he started. "Wh—"

Before he could get out much more, Rukia gripped his collar with her gloved hand and pulled. Ichigo could feel the beginnings of that feeling from earlier in the day, of having his soul forcibly separated from his body. He tried to resist, having no idea what her purpose could be. But it was for naught. Resist or not, he didn't think he could stop the Soul Reaper from splitting him in two. The last thing he was aware of within his own body before he left it was the feel of her other hand gripping tightly to his shirt and pulling as well.

Then he was free, tumbling across the floor after she released his soul and crashing head-first into the wardrobe door that was still closed.

He quickly got to his feet and spun to face her, readying a dozen angry barbs to hurl at her for what she had done. What he saw froze him in place, instead. Rukia had dragged his body off the bed as well, and it was sprawled in her lap as she tried to wriggle back with it, to drag it further from the bed. In the meantime, red arm that was massive and muscular and looked to be covered in millions of tiny scales punched free from the wall.

Ichigo at once recognised it as a Hollow's arm without knowing how, considering that it looked different to the one he had killed a few days ago. He also saw that where the arm was coming from was undamaged and darkened in shadows without source. And he knew they were without source—he looked. It looked like the shadowy void the other Hollow had used a few nights ago to retreat and reposition when Rukia had injured it.

The massive red hand came down on his bed with enough force to shake it and half the room. Ichigo watched as the head and upper torso of the Hollow soon followed through that void. The shape of the skull-like face was slightly different. It was a little less wide, but taller, more in line with the dimensions of a human face. But through those slightly narrowed slits for eyes were what looked like glowing rubies. Dark shaggy hair hung from its head in all directions like a curtain, but those eyes still gleamed from behind it. Its upper body looked like that of a man, though much bigger, more muscled, and black like the night. It too seemed to be covered in those millions upon millions of tiny scales.

As the Hollow came through from wherever it had come from, its weight was transferred to the only arm holding it up. Unfortunately, that arm was using Ichigo's bed as a bracing point, and the legs of that bed didn't want to deal with that insult. They groaned, cracked, and gave way. The bed crashed to the floor with a crunching sound that Ichigo didn't like one bit. It turned its large head towards him and, when it saw him, howled.

"Why are you just standing there?" Rukia demanded, looking over her shoulder at him with a frown as she continued to struggle with his body. "Do something!"

The Hollow twisted and lunged in their direction.

Thinking fast, Ichigo dropped to the floor and rolled over to the left away from it. Rukia, he saw, just flattened herself against the ground as best she could over his body to protect it. The Hollow sailed over the top and slammed into the wardrobe door with a crash. Ichigo noticed that everything below the chest was long and sinewy, like that of a snake, and continued into the void.

"Aim for its head," Rukia advised him, looking up.

"Huh?" The Hollow swung around to look at him, gauging for another strike, Ichigo knew. He yanked his sword free from its scabbard along his back and swung at the Hollow. It was a wide swing, too wide to land on anything. But it drove the Hollow back a little against the wall.

The long, sinewy part of the Hollow coiled and whipped out at him, collecting him in the side. Ichigo stumbled sideways into the path of the oncoming clawed right hand of the Hollow. He danced around it, placing his feet with great care. He knew every inch of his room better than any Hollow, and could use that knowledge.

Ichigo swung down at the still-extended arm, felt his sword connect and slice clean through those tiny scales. Blackish-red blood spilled from the cut as he drew his sword away, and splattered against the floor.

"Focus, Ichigo!" Rukia's voice admonished. He was too preoccupied to bother searching for her that instant. Even half a second to see where she was, was half a second the Hollow needed to catch him off-guard. "Don't just swing your sword around!"

"Shut up!" he snarled. "Who cares, as long as I kill it?"

The Hollow gathered itself to retaliate and lunged at him again. Ichigo jumped up, clearing the extended and uninjured arm of the monster. He brought his sword up and over his head, feeling some unexpected resistance. He didn't check what it was, though. He had the positional advantage over his foe and he couldn't lose that due to inattentiveness. He brought the sword crashing down towards the Hollow.

"You're mine!" he cried out just before the edge of the sword made contact with the bone of its face.

But the unexpected resistance from an instant before had cost him a fatal strike, he realised almost instantly. It wasn't even a deep cut, let alone one that could cleave its head in two. The blade, however, had bitten into the bone a little, and with some added strength shoving down, he was able to slice through a little further. Cracks spider-webbed out from where the sword made contact.

Ichigo pulled his sword free and jumped back out of reach just as the cracks reached the edge of the mask. Larger cracks sported smaller branches that connected to other large cracks. Ichigo could feel some sort of energy leaking from those cracks. Was that spirit energy? He had never considered that a Hollow would possess it, but it did make sense if they were spirit beings.

It shattered. Not the whole mask, mind, only a portion of it where Ichigo's blade had cut through.

"What?" Ichigo exclaimed in disbelief. Beneath what he had thought was the Hollow's face was what looked to be its _actual_ face. It was human, with dark hair and a dark eye. Though he admittedly couldn't see much of it, he did recognise what he _did_ see.

The Hollow screamed in anger and disappeared through the shadowy void without resuming its attack.

"It's getting away!" Rukia said, getting to her feet and dashing to the window. She flung it open and turned to face Ichigo. "We have to go after it."

"Wait a second," Ichigo replied slowly. He lowered the sword until the tip was touching the floor of his room. "Something's not right."

Rukia's left eyebrow disappeared amongst her bangs. "What?"

Ichigo's grip on his sword tightened until his knuckles were white. "I got a good look at that thing's face," he said through gritted teeth. "It was Orihime's brother, Sora."


	14. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

The Soul Reaper chewed on her lip for a moment and looked away from him with something akin to guilt on her face. "Are you certain?" she asked quietly. When he nodded, which she somehow saw while looking away, she went on. "A word of advice: when attacking Hollows, try to come from behind and cleave their heads in a single blow. Don't forget it—it's basic tactics for Soul Reapers in fighting Hollows."

"Why? What do you mean?"

"It will keep your injuries to a minimum," she explained, turning back to him. "And, with luck, it will keep you from learning the identity of the Hollow."

"Their identity?"

"You just saw it for yourself. Don't you understand? Hollows were once the souls of humans no different from anyone else." She said this so matter-of-factly that Ichigo could feel his anger rise that she had kept it from him before now.

"You … you never told me!" he said angrily, raising the sword again. "So that thing was just a monster, wasn't it? It was just some beast from the underworld that needed to be destroyed before it could harm anyone?"

Rukia nodded. "Correct. He is just a monster … now. And he must be destroyed."

"But he was human once!" Ichigo insisted, trying to make her understand. How could he be expected to destroy something human—whether it was now or not didn't even enter into it.

"It can't be helped," Rukia said. "Souls that hold on to feelings of regret or remorse can sometimes resist crossing over and remain in this world. When that happens, they either become Hollows on their own or they fall prey to other Hollows and become one with the fold."

"But …" Ichigo stammered. "That's … that's … no …"

But the partially revealed face he'd seen had indeed been Sora Inoue. His was a face that had been burned into Ichigo's memory from years ago, the night that he had died. Ichigo had been younger than, and hadn't really begun to interact spirits the same way he was now. And every death he had seen had stuck with him; Sora's, his mother's …

What he remembered most that night was the much younger Orihime, screaming her anguish into the night as she watched her brother wheeled into the back of an ambulance that promptly drove him away. Ichigo's father had tried to calm her some, but even his serious, fatherly side hadn't been able to do much.

Ichigo even thought at the time that now they had something in common, something that could maybe make them friends. She could use one, after all. Ichigo hadn't had any when his mother had passed. But remembering his own loss prevented him from acting on those thoughts, and she remained alone in child services' care until an aunt had arrived.

"I don't get it," Ichigo started. He sheathed his sword and closed the distance between himself and Rukia. It wasn't lost on him that in the middle of his introspection; Rukia had somehow hefted his body back up onto the bed in a position that could pass for sleep. "Why did Orihime's brother attack _us_?"

Rukia shook her head. "Not us," she said. "Just you." There was that matter-of-fact tone in her voice again. "Judging from the fact that the last two Hollows you encountered both seemed to be after you, and added on that Orihime's brother is now fixated on you, I would guess that there's a more powerful Hollow behind this that wants your spirit energy for itself. It probably has several less-powerful Hollows under its control. It knows where you are now, and it's sending other Hollows here to carry out its orders.

"Likely, it plans to let one of its underlings consume your spirit energy before it consumes that Hollow when it returns to the Hollows' domain. _That_ is why Orihime's brother has come here to attack you."

Ichigo grabbed her by the collar of the appropriated pajamas she was wearing and lifted her almost a foot off the ground. "And you expect me to kill him now?" he demanded hotly. "There's no way that I could do that!"

Scowling, Rukia slapped his hand aside so hard he lost his grip. "You have to do it !" she replied just as heatedly. "You don't have a choice in this. If you don't kill him, he'll wander around forever, and he'll keep coming after you again and again until he gets your soul! And in the meantime, every other spirit, or human with high spiritual awareness, is under threat of attack by him. He's not going to be able to stop himself now that he's a Hollow."

Ichigo resisted the urge to pick her up again and toss her out through the open window. Not only would such a thing be futile and, face it, cruel, it was likely to result in nothing. Temporary body or not, Rukia was a trained Soul Reaper and would likely be able to respond to that swiftly. Instead, he turned his head to look away from her, refusing to verbally concede the point to her.

"Wait," Rukia suddenly said, grabbing his attention. "You're not the only one in danger here!"

Quick as a flash, he was looking at her again. "Who else would he want?"

"His sister," Rukia replied quickly, "Orihime."

Horror struck Ichigo still. Reason told him that he should leave that instant. That the Hollow hadn't already returned to his room to finish him meant that either t he cracking of its mask was a more serious blow than Ichigo had accounted for, or he had decided to go after someone else.

"How long will it take to recover from the blow I just dealt it?" he asked.

"Not long. In the time it's taken for me to explain that much to you, it could have regenerated its mask and healed its cuts. He could already be back in the world of the living, hunting his sister, for all we know."

"Let's go!" he grabbed Rukia by the wrist and leapt from the window, ignoring the surprised yelp from her.

He landed on the sidewalk below clumsily, but corrected quickly. Before Rukia's feet even touched the ground, he swung her up and around until she wrapped her legs around his middle and her arms loosely around his neck. When he was sure that she was securely in place, he coiled and sprang high into the air, landing on a nearby rooftop and then leaping again to the next.

"So," he started when they were well and truly on their way, "Hollows will attack their own families?" He was having trouble wrapping his mind around that.

"Brothers, sisters … even children," Rukia replied.

"Why would they do that?" Ichigo leapt up onto a taller building and dashed across the top of it before making a riskier leap from there to the roof of a much smaller building.

"Hollows are fallen souls—souls that were not guided to the Soul Society by a Soul Reaper, nor protected from other Hollows," Rukia explained. She gripped tighter with her arms and legs and, mercifully, resisted yelping in Ichigo's ear when he stopped suddenly, and sprung much, much higher onto a tall building in the middle of town. "Abandoned, they fall, and lose their hearts to become Hollows themselves.

"Now that this Hollow has failed to devour your soul, I'm sure that he'll go after his sister—the person that he loved the most when he was still alive. Remember that bruise on Orihime's leg that we saw today? She said that it was from being hit by a car. But I've seen marks like that before. That mark could only have been left by a Hollow. And knowing now that the Hollow is her brother, it makes sense why it went after her before it came after you. But if it was still in the area when we ran into her, it would have recognised your high spiritual presence and fixated on you. Especially if it was being ordered to go after you in the first place."

"So you think that her brother has already tried to kill her once?" Ichigo asked, leaping again. "And you think he's about to try it again?"

"That's very possible."

"Hold on," he warned her before coming to a controlled stop at the edge of the tall building they were on.

He looked down at the street below, gauged the distance and looked around for anyone that might witness it. He knew that no one would see _him_ landing, but with Rukia still in her gigai, on his back, they would see something. Only, to a bystander, it would look like a strange, small girl grabbing onto the back of something they couldn't see, floating throat the air as he dashed around. So while Rukia hadn't exactly warned him to be discreet, he did see the need for it.

He stepped off the side of the building and dropped to the ground, landing perfectly. Then he was off again, dashing west towards where he knew Orihime lived. It wasn't far. Just a couple more blocks.

"Something has been bugging me about this world you've shown me," he said suddenly after rounding a corner. A car was ahead of them, quite some distance and going in the same direction so its beams wouldn't illuminate Rukia for the driver to see.

"What?"

"You said that souls go to the Soul Society, either on their own or when helped along by a Soul Reaper performing _kons__ō_. Is that right?" He felt, rather than saw, Rukia nodding her head. "All of them?"

There wasn't an immediate answer. And that in itself was almost an answer. Though, what it meant, he couldn't say. But when she spoke, she clarified his confusion. "Not all. Anyone that commits unforgiveable crimes in their human life cannot pass into the Soul Society. A _kons__ō_ will not work on a soul whose crimes are unforgiveable. The _zanpakutō_ is the only way to dispatch them, much as it is the only way to deal with Hollows."

"So where do those … sinners go?"

"Hell." Sensing his reticence at her response, she continued. "Hell is the counter-point to the Soul Society. It is technically called the Underworld. But in human terms it is better known as Hell, just as the Soul Society could be heaven to your world."

"So fire and brimstone, a big red demon with horns, tail and a pitchfork?"

"Not exactly. The fire and brimstone, granted, probably exist in one of the many levels of the Underworld," Rukia said. "But there is no 'devil' as you humans would know it. Hell itself is the devil. It's almost a sentient thing that exists purely to bring about eternal suffering to sinners."

Ichigo mulled that over in his mind, but not for long before Orihime's apartment building came into view. An added burst of speed got the two of them there in good time, and Ichigo leapt up to occupy the open window space.

Inside, he saw the Hollow had beaten them there. It was entirely out of the void space now, which had disappeared. Orihime Inoue was on her knees before it, and the Hollow's scaly arm was speeding towards Orihime, its clawed fingers ready to dig through her body.

Quickly, he deposited Rukia on the floor inside the apartment and dashed across, drawing his sword and hearing the comforting metallic ring of it sliding against its scabbard. He put himself directly in the path of the attack and brought his sword up, using it to block the strike. He felt a hard impact that jarred his shoulders, and a _clang_ as those hard claw tips hit the blade and were stopped dead.

"I'm the one that you're _really_ after," he snarled at the monster. "Leave her alone and fight me!" He shoved hard with as much strength as he could put into it and watched as the Hollow slithered back. It howled at the shallow cut Ichigo had gifted its hand and retreated through a void just in time to avoid a second swing from Ichigo.

Free for a moment, Ichigo half-turned to assess the room. Tatsuki was there as well, unconscious in a heap against the wall. She was bleeding from her shoulder, and her breathing seemed far too shallow, even from that distance. Orihime was right behind him, still on her knees and still in the clothes she had been wearing that afternoon when Ichigo and Rukia had run into her. She looked both confused and frightened at the same time. It made her look rather frail, vulnerable.

_Damn it, Tatsuki_, he thought to himself. _How did you get caught up in all of this?_

"Ichigo?" Orihime started, looking up at him. Ichigo let his gaze drop to look at her. "Thank you for rescuing us from that thing. But where did you come from?

"Whoa," he started, backing up a step. "Hold on a minute. You can see me?"

Then he noticed the chain. It was a chain he'd grown familiar with in passing months; the chain that connected the departed to whatever still tethered them to the world of life. It sprouted obscenely from between her breasts and spilled down her body and across the floor to where her body lay, unmoving, a couple of meters away.

He backed up another step, shock settling in. "No …" he whispered to himself.

"_Soul reapers are spirit beings,_" Rukia had once told him the day after he had performed _kons__ō_ on the spirit child in the park. She had dragged his soul from his body that day too, insisting on him learning how to operate his Soul Reaper form more effectively. Practice, she called it. "_And as such, no ordinary humans will be able to see you. Only other spirit beings can see you._" Every perverted teenage boy's wet dream, Ichigo realised when she'd told him that.

But not his.

"Then she's—"

"That's right!" The voice was unknown to him. It was dark, deep, and slightly gravelly. Though Ichigo knew reasonably well that it had to belong to the Hollow, it in no way resembled Sora Inoue's voice when he had been alive. This was the voice of a monster. It was closer to that of the first Hollow he had battled, less than a week ago at his home. But it wasn't exactly the same. "She's a spirit being now. In other words …"

Ichigo turned his head to look back at where the Hollow had disappeared to see it coming through the void shadow again and into his world in the middle of the room. "ORIHIME IS DEAD!"


	15. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

Ichigo snapped, and while Rukia called out for him to keep his cool, it appeared that he wasn't listening, or couldn't hear her through his rage. Ichigo lunged forward, swinging his _zanpakut__ō_ wildly in a mad attempt to cleave something.

The Hollow was ready for his charge, however. With the grace of a snake, it dodged around Ichigo, seeming to ignore him as it charged straight for the kneeling Orihime. As it swung past her through the air, it snagged her Soul Chain, gripping it tightly and tugging it hard. She yelped and went flying through the air behind him.

Ichigo slashed down at the Hollow's long, thick tail, but his _zanpakut__ō_ impacted without causing any damage. Ichigo was doubting his resolve. Rukia could see him falter. And it was obvious if a strike like that had done nothing more than bounce when it should have severed the tail at that point.

In response, the Hollow flexed the muscles in its tail, flicking it towards Ichigo and sending him flying through the closed window. He crashed through the glass into the night air, and Rukia watched with amazement as he tapped into his own inner Soul Reaper powers and used his _reishi_ to keep himself afloat. He skidded through the air, coming to a halt a dozen strides from the apartment building, and got back to his feet at the same level as the window.

Rukia made a grab for Orihime, but stopped when the Hollow gripped her soul form in its clawed hand tightly and directed its gaze out towards Ichigo. Instead, Rukia made for Orihime's physical body, and began to check her signs of life.

"Stay back!" the Hollow growled to Ichigo. Rukia's gaze drifted past the Hollow to where Ichigo was frozen in the air, watching as the monster squeezed its own sister.

The tail flexed, and lashed out in a whipping motion to slam Ichigo to the street below.

Rukia abandoned Orihime's body. Her lift signs were non-existent. But she was still connected by the chain. There was hope yet. She raced to the window and leapt through it before the Hollow could move to stop her. Landing on the street below, she hurried to Ichigo's side and dropped to her knees.

"Ichigo!" she cried out. She touched a hand to his shoulder and gave him a shove. "Ichigo? You have to get up, Ichigo!"

"Ichigo!" she heard Orihime call out. "Ichigo! No! Is he hurt? I have to go help him!" Rukia turned to the girl to see her hands on the large forefinger of her brother, pushing against it as she tried to wriggle herself free. "Let me go!"

But her struggles were for naught. Rukia knew she wouldn't be able to free herself from a grip like that. A Hollow, even one that wasn't her brother, wasn't going to release its grip so easily.

"I said let me go!"

Rukia turned back to Ichigo and tried to help him up. He wasn't moving much, but his breathing indicated that he was still conscious. She sensed the telltale signs of leaking spiritual energy as she got her shoulder up underneath his and shoved.

"Ichigo," Rukia grunted, shoving again and gaining some leverage. "Come on, Ichigo. Get up!" He was heavy, and she was having a hard time maintaining her composure while trying to get him back to his feet. At this rate, she was going to tire herself in the attempt in no time.

Finally, he moved on his own, bringing his knees up under him and bracing himself with his hands as he drew in large gasps of air. Blood—the visual manifestation of his leaking spiritual energy—was dripping down the right side of his face from a deep cut in his scalp. He groaned, but seemed to bear the pain well.

"I'm trying," he said weakly.

"This isn't going to be easy," Rukia told him after a moment, looking back up at the Hollow and Orihime in its grasp. "Where are you hurt?"

"Like you care," Ichigo replied bitterly. Despite his accusation, she did really care. She didn't bother to contradict him, however, and just let the slight slide. She watched as he took his weight off her shoulder completely and got back to his feet. "Forget about it," he added. "I'm OK."

Rukia looked him over. Aside from the cut in his scalp and some pretty bad bruises and scrapes from being slapped around by the Hollow's thick tail, he looked all right. And his spiritual energy wasn't fading fast at all. If he didn't leave it too long, he could still defeat the Hollow upstairs with Orihime. She could heal his wounds later, even with her meagre remaining spiritual ability.

"Good," she said, convinced by his assurances by his appearance. "You've got work to do. Listen carefully … That Hollow may have been her brother once, but now it's nothing more than a monster. You've absolutely got to stop it. It doesn't have a heart anymore, so put aside all of your feelings and destroy it."

Rukia looked up. The Hollow had disappeared back into the building, taking its prisoner with it. Rukia knew that Ichigo had to hurry. Soon, the Hollow would give in to its baser instinct and devour its sister's soul. And when that happened, there was nothing she could do to save her life, no matter how much healing she tried.

Ichigo staggered a little when he took a step toward the house, and Rukia was quick in helping him regain his balance. He shrugged her off quickly, but did take hold of her wrist before he leapt for the window again, sword in his other hand.

"SHUT UP, ORIHIME!" the Hollow was screaming at its prisoner. "Don't tell me what's right, when it's _your_ fault that I've become this monster!"

The aforementioned monster grabbed the girl tightly with both hands, squeezing as its thumb pressed against her windpipe. She was only a soul, but breathing was still a necessity. It allowed the flow of spiritual energy to flow through her soul form to keep her stable. With her airway blocked like that, she was quickly going to fade, and the Hollow would be able to devour her without a second thought.

"I should kill you first, for the way you've abandoned me;" the creature growled, its face now close to Orihime's, "for choosing this girl and Ichigo over honouring my memory! I'll kill you!"

"No you won't, you fucking freak!" Ichigo growled. He dropped Rukia unceremoniously on the floor before leaping onto the long, coiled tail of the Hollow and driving his _zanpakutō_ deep into its scaled flesh.

The Hollow screamed in pain on Ichigo's next stabbing strike. Its grip slackened, and Orihime slipped free. Thinking fast, Rukia dived over and caught the girl, falling to her knees beneath her. Then she scooted backwards, closer to Orihime's lifeless body and out of reach of the Hollow and its tormentor.

Ichigo jumped off the Hollow's tail when it swung an arm around to knock him loose. With the pest gone, the monster turned to Rukia and Orihime and charged.

Ichigo beat it to them, slashing up and to the left with his sword in a two-handed grip that severed the Hollow's hand at the wrist. It howled in rage, while at the same time its sister started coughing fitfully between large gulps of air.

"Let me ask you something, Captain Overbite," Ichigo started, shouldering his blade and glaring at the Hollow. "Do you know why big brothers are born first? It's so that they can look out for their little brothers and sisters! And protect them!"

"Ichigo …" Rukia started.

"And here you are," he continued, ignoring her, "threatening to kill your own sister. Not even a dead man has the right to say that!"

"SHUT UP!" the Hollow roared at him defiantly. "You don't know what you're talking about you idiot child. Orihime is _mine_! I was fifteen when she was born and I raised her when our parents abandoned us. To me, she has been more like a daughter than a younger sister. So don't presume to lecture me!"

The monster held its hand out in their direction, beckoning. "Come with me now, Orihime. Come back to when it was just you and me, happy together. If you do, then I promise I will spare these other souls."

Rukia only had a loose hold of Rukia, certainly not enough to restrain her. She hadn't expected the girl to take the monster's words to heart. But it looked like she was considering it. She got to her feet, shrugging off Rukia's arms and taking half a step towards the thing that had once been her brother.

"Wait, Orihime! It's a trap!" Rukia hissed to her. "You can't believe anything he says, because he doesn't have the feelings of a big brother anymore."

The redhead looked back at her, uncertainty making her eyes shine with tears. "Are you sure?"

"Orihime. Is. MINE!"

The Hollow flung himself toward them, and Rukia braced herself to grab the girl and dodge out of the way. Ichigo didn't move from where he stood, in the way, however. All he did was bring his _zanpakutō_down and around, bracing the blade with his other hand as he used it to block the open jaw of the Hollow.

"Orihime doesns't belong to anyone!" he declared angrily. "Least of all to you!"

He twisted the blade and shoved off, breaking one of the Hollow's large teeth and forcing the monster through the window into the street. He charged out after it, leaping high into the air and coming down at the Hollow from above. His _zanpakutō_ flashed under the illumination of the street lights as it was swung down with enough force to cleave a stone pillar.

"Do it!" Rukia shouted at him. "What are you waiting for?"

The Hollow turned its head, spitting a slimy substance at Ichigo that caught his hands. He hissed in pain and dropped his blade. It skewered the sidewalk, and Ichigo fell prey to the Hollow's tail again as it flicked and sent him to the street below. Rukia watched as he got his feet under him at the last instant for a hard, but controlled landing. It would hurt his legs in the morning, no doubt, but he would live.

A flash of purple and yellow and red went streaking past Rukia before she understood that it was Orihime. The Hollow below swung around in a wide, graceful arc and charged Ichigo from behind. Only the monster's attack cry warned him of the impending danger, but when he turned it was already too late.

"ICHIGO!" Rukia screamed.

Orihime interjected herself at the last minute, charging in front of the Hollow and putting her arms around it as best she could. The Hollow's teeth clamped shut before it even registered that she was there. A pained gasp, a gush of blood that pattered to the pavement. The Hollow stopped short of biting her in half, but its teeth were firmly entrenched in Orihime's left shoulder.

"Orihime …" Ichigo's voice was laced with surprise, disbelief. Rukia left the apartment and rushed to his side as fast as she could.

"Orihime …" the Hollow growled. "Why did you do that?"

"Sora, I had to save Ichigo," the girl said through teeth gritted against the pain. "Because this is all my fault. The reason you're this way … it's because of me, because I begged you not to leave me alone when I saw you being taken away. That's why you weren't able to find peace. And it's all my fault.

"Since you died, I've always had this sense that you're watching over me, because I'd asked you to. Even yesterday, when that car was about to hit me, you protected me, didn't you? I have this mark on my leg because you grabbed me out of the way just in time. That was you, wasn't it?"

Realisation dawned on Rukia. She had been fretting about why the Hollow had marked her like that without just taking her soul. A Hollow didn't care in what form its meal came, whether it be spirit or human. But that only left another question: why had it saved her in the first place? Hollows didn't have any of the human traits they'd possessed in life. Why would she have meant anything to him beyond a meal?

"That explains it," Rukia said to Ichigo.

"One day, I realised that if I kept depending on you to stay by my side, that you'd never be able to rest in peace. But if I showed you … if I showed you that my life was really happy and that you didn't have to worry about me anymore that you could pass on. I never dreamed that you could be so sad and lonely, Sora." She sniffled. "I would never want to do that to you, big brother!"

"Orihime …" the Hollow said.

The girl gasped in pain, falling free from the Hollow's slackened jaw and hitting the sidewalk. Rukia could feel the energy flowing freely from the girl's soul, leaving her much weaker with each passing second. In no time, she would be truly dead.

The Hollow howled again, in pain despite the fact that it had taken no physical injury at that moment. Rukia heard the plaintive wail of a brother despairing over the imminent death of his younger sister. Cracks appeared in the skull-like visage of its face, and then healed again. More appeared in another spot, and again they healed over an instant later.

"Rukia …" Ichigo started. "What the hell is happening to him?"

"I'm not sure," she started, "but I think that the part of him that's still human inside is fighting the Hollow for control. Evidently, this one didn't become a Hollow by choice. He must have been taken over and forced into subservience."

"Taken over? By who?"

"A soul that is devoured by a strong Hollow is manipulated by that strong Hollow. And that Hollow desires your spirit energy, so it took over this poor soul, planning to use it to attack you. It hoped that since you knew this soul in life, that you would hesitate to fight him—which, in fact, you did. Right now, the brother's soul is desperately fighting his Hollow, for the sake of his sister."

"ORIHIME!" It was a long, drawn out scream that rent the air and threatened to wake all nearby, if they'd been spiritually aware enough to hear it. It screamed again in what seemed to be unbearable pain.

Cracks reappeared in the mask, all over it this time, and it shattered before they could heal over again. Free from his Hollow, Sora Inoue looked both sad and incredibly frightened. Though, it didn't seem like that fear was because of Ichigo. No, it seemed, to Rukia's eyes, that he feared for his sister.

He looked down at her, lowering himself on a body that was still very Hollow. "No …"

"Orihime!" Ichigo rushed to her side without waiting for permission, and Rukia joined him there, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"It's all right," she told him. "Her Soul Chain is still connected to her chest. As long as it's attached to her, she won't die. I need to treat her, though, and quickly. What power I have left should be enough to save her life."

Ichigo nodded and Rukia went gently to her knees, pressing one hand to the crown of Orihime's head and the other to her chest. She focussed on the remnants of her power, letting it flow through her and into Orihime, directing it to her soul's wounds to heal them before could return her to her body.

"That hair pin she's wearing was a present from you, wasn't it, Sora?" Ichigo asked from somewhere to Rukia's left. Without breaking her concentration, she looked up to see Ichigo and Orihime's brother both looking down at the unconscious girl. "She told me that once. That's why she wears it every day."

Sora's deep, brown eyes grew wet with restrained tears. Rukia felt her heart breaking at the tragedy before her: a man whose life had so cruelly and untimely been taken from him, only to have his afterlife stolen as well by a Hollow who wanted to use him, and the girl who missed her brother fiercely.

Then he turned away from the three of them. At first, Rukia thought that perhaps he just wanted to hide the tears, that he didn't want his sister, even unconscious, to see him cry. But then he slithered over to where Ichigo's _zanpakutō_ was sticking out of the concrete and, gripping the handle, pulled it free.

"What are you doing?" Ichigo asked.

"I only have a short time before the Hollow overwhelms me again and changes me back into a monster," Sora replied, turning to them once more. He raised the blade until its tip was pressed against the centre of his chest, just above the telltale hole that defined all Hollows. "So, while I'm sane and can still think clearly, I'll end this."

"No! Wait! Don't do—"

"Ichigo …" Ichigo turned to look at Rukia. "It's all right," she told him gently. "He's made the right decision. Once you become a Hollow, you can never go back to what you were again. Passing on is the best thing for him."

"But, Rukia—"

"It's OK. You'll learn that exorcising a Hollow is not the same thing as killing it. A Soul Reaper's _zanpakutō_ cleanses the soul of a Hollow it dispatches, allowing it to enter the Soul Society. That's why Soul Reapers exist in the first place: to help all souls find their way, and finally rest in peace."

"Oh." Ichigo turned back to Sora, who nodded to him and prepared himself mentally to drive the blade into his own chest.

Orihime coughed beneath Rukia's touch, and she withdrew her power and her hands to let her sit up. "Wait," she wheezed, coughing again. "I have to tell you something.

"This hair pin … remember the argument that we had about it the day you gave it to me? I said I didn't like it because it didn't look grown up enough for me. I know that I hurt your feelings, Sora, and you left without saying anything else to me that night. That was the last time I saw you alive. So now, I want to say what I should have said to you when you went off to work that day."

Rukia could see the tears streaming down Sora Inoue's face now, freely loosed and dripping from his chin to the ground. The _zanpakutō_ wavered in his grip, but remained in place, ready to end it, as he'd said. Orihime smiled weakly at him, leaning back against Rukia for support.

"Big brother …" she started. "Have a good day."

Despite the tears, her brother managed a smile for her, a smile that conveyed the love and adoration he still felt for his sister, as well as the sadness that he was about to rob her of him for a second time. "Thanks … Orihime."

The _zanpakutō_ slithered deep beneath scale, flesh and bone until it was hilt-deep in Sora's Hollowfied chest. He grunted, and the smile disappeared seconds before the rest of him faded from the world of the living.

Rukia wrapped her arms around Orihime as the girl flung herself at the Soul Reaper and burst out in tears. The only thing she could think about the whole thing as her eyes came up to meet Ichigo's gaze was that it was unfair for someone so lovely to have to deal with the death of her only brother twice in her life time.


	16. Part 2

**Part 2**

**Memories in the Rain**

Connecting two hearts

The way the rain connects the Earth and the sky

Even though the two never touch


	17. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

Rukia could see plenty of movement in the street below her when she looked down. She was perched on the edge of one of the larger skyscrapers in the middle of town. The door to the roof from the stairway was still open, the alarm disabled and the lock picked. And Rukia was in the uniform of Karakura High, having not yet returned to the Kurosaki residence to change after school.

She withdrew a small item from the pocket of her shirt and looked down at the single light out of four that was blinking at long intervals.

"Hm," she said to herself. "I don't have much of this left."

Kikan shinki was an essential tool for Soul Reapers in the world of the living. Since humans had long since abandoned belief in the existence of the metaphysical world as it was, choosing instead to believe in an exaggerated ideal, it was important to keep them in the dark as to the activities of Soul Reapers in their world. And that was exactly what kikan shinki did.

It was a memory replacement tool. Once used, it erased all the recent memories of Hollows or Soul Reapers from the subject and replaced them with memories that were … impossible to predict. That was because the replacement memories was dependant on what the subject would find believable, in essence drawing from their own memories and imagination. In people like Orihime Inoue, a classmate, it created elaborate fantasies which she alone believed.

Rukia had had to use the device quite a lot since the start of her assignment. She'd used it on Ichigo's family the night they had been attacked by a Hollow seeking Ichigo. That had been the very same night he had taken her Soul Reaper power from her, leaving her more or less helpless. She'd had to use it again on Orihime and her friend when a Hollow that had once been Orihime's brother had attacked them, again to get to Ichigo.

She held up her left hand and flexed her fingers. The movement was slower than she had intended, and rigid. She rolled her wrist to loosen the muscles, but even that didn't respond to her will as much as it should have. Something was off. It just felt … wrong.

"And this thing isn't getting any better," she said, scowling at her rebellious hand. "I think it's time to replenish."


	18. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

Already dressed and ready for school, Ichigo ascended the steps to the top floor of his home. A plate of cold rice balls and hot egg rolls in hand—an offering to his friend.

A little more than a month had passed since Ichigo had become a Soul Reaper, having taken the powers of Rukia Kuchiki, completely unintentionally … sort of. He hadn't meant to leave her almost entirely powerless, at the very least, and surely that counted for _something_. Since then, she had been pretending to be a human; attending his school, making friends and even helping herself to Ichigo's younger sister's clothes without the girl knowing where they were disappearing to. She was also sleeping her nights away in Ichigo's wardrobe.

His father would have a field day with that if he ever found out. How the hell could he possibly explain it away without seeming like a perverted teenage boy hiding a girlfriend his father knew nothing about? His relationship with Rukia was nothing like that. In fact, he had grown a little fond of her, despite how much she annoyed him at times. They were becoming true friends, far more than just a Soul Reaper and the human boy that had taken her powers.

And yet, he couldn't hide her forever. One of these days, Yuzu was bound to find out about it while cleaning his room, or Rukia would slip up and be seen but Ichigo's family without meaning to. Or someone would notice that he wasn't actually eating the plates of food he squirreled away to his room after breakfast and dinner for Rukia to chow down on.

He entered his room, closed the door behind him, and knocked on the wardrobe, still holding the plate.

"Hey!" he started. "Wake up in there. I brought your breakfast, OK?" He waited for a moment, listening for any telltale scrambling as she slipped out of her appropriated pajamas and into her school uniform—a uniform Ichigo refused to consider the origins of.

But when there was no sound, nor a response from her, he knocked again. "Come on! Open up!" Still nothing to signify that she was even awake, let alone that she was listening. It wasn't entirely out of bounds to assume she might have slept in. Over the past week, she had done so almost every day and had been late for school just as often.

He was beginning to wonder about that, wonder whether she was feeling OK, or if this was yet another side-effect—albeit a delayed one—of his having taken her powers.

"Get up already," he said, hammering on the door twice. "Do you want this food or not?"

After another couple of minutes with no response, he took a chance and shoved the door open. Aside from the folded mattresses that Rukia had been using as a bed and her pajamas neatly folded in a pile near the foot of said bed, her shelf was completely empty.

"Perfect," he muttered to himself. "Where did she go now?"

Apparently, this morning was not going to be one of her slacker ones. Ichigo set the plate of her breakfast down on his study desk and helped himself to a rice ball.

After he'd eaten two of the three, and downed all the egg rolls, he picked up his bag and headed downstairs. His father's voice drifted up to him when he was halfway down. He was saying something, apparently to the girls.

"—in the spring time of his youth would barricade himself up in his room for one reason, and one reason only." By the time he'd finished that, Ichigo had reached the bottom of the stairs and had punched his father in the side, hard, to keep him quiet.

"Knock it off! Quit analysing me, you pervert!" he snapped.

Isshin recovered quickly and scooted a couple of steps away. "What's the matter, son?" he asked, hands on his hips and a smug grin in place. "It's because I'm your father, isn't it? You don't like it when I'm right. What's wrong with a little parental understanding, I say?"

"Understanding, my ass!" Ichigo threw another punch, which his father ducked, grabbed and used as leverage to pull Ichigo toward him. He socked Ichigo as he flew past, driving the wind out of him.

Ichigo, in turn, lashed out with his foot as he dropped to a knee. He felt the connect, and swept his father's footing out from under him, sending him crashing to his rear to the floor so hard it likely knocked his brain around inside his skull a little.

"Quiet morning, huh?" Karin said, looking down at them with a bowl of rice in her hand.

* * *

Across town, Rukia was also already dressed and ready for school. She had her backpack on her back, and her hand clutched at a small clasp purse. It was surprising, but the man she was going to see, while a dealer in Soul Reaper equipment, accepted human money as payment from her. She wasn't sure if it was something he did for all Soul Reapers in the area as a way of maintaining his cover as a human merchant, or because he was sweet on her.

Actually, thinking about the latter possibility gave Rukia a shiver. He was a little creepy in a way. Mysterious. Reliable, but not exactly the most trustworthy type. With all of that said, she found it extremely hard to form a solid opinion of the man. One minute she thought one thing, and the next he would completely surprise her and she would change her mind.

The shop was still closed she saw. But no matter; he would still see her. Out the front of the shop were two children that stayed with the man, though they were not his. One was a young boy with vivid crimson hair and a perpetual scowl wearing blue pants and a white shirt with the shop's name on it. The other was a girl around the same size with a downcast gaze, dark pigtails and loose bangs that came down between her eyes almost to her chin.

"You're not the boss of me," the boy was saying to the girl harshly. "I'm in charge because I'm bigger than you!

The girl didn't look at him directly, in fact she cowered as he swung the straw broom in his hands over her head. "We're the same size!" she insisted. "Besides, Jinta, I'm three years older than you are!"

"So? Who cares about age? I'm a higher rank than you!"

The boy swung the broom again, this time looking like he was ready to swat the poor girl with it. Rukia decided then was the best time for her to act. Children were children, but bullying was something she'd never turn a blind eye to. She dashed over and snatched the broom from the boy's hand before he could bring it down.

Stunning, he spun around and glared. "Who are—" Then he saw who she was. "Oh." And the scowl, if possible, grew deeper.

"You never change, do you, little one?" Rukia said, shaking her head. She tossed the broom aside. "Is your manager in?"

The boy _harrumphed_ irritably. "Come on in."

He turned and together the boy and girl opened the doors to the shop. Rukia stepped up to the inner door as the girl started pushing it aside too, and inside she could see the assistant. He was a large man, with large muscles and a moustache. He wore square spectacles and had tanned skin, and his thinning hair was tied into thin braids at the back of his head, all gathered in a bunch. In his arms was a stack of what looked like heavy boxes piled so high he couldn't see over them.

He wasn't straining to move them either. That was slightly intimidating, Rukia decided.

The assistant stopped and turned his head to look at the three of them standing outside the shop. "What are you doing, Jinta?" he said, clearly to the boy. "It's too early to open up the shop."

He looked Rukia up and down. It didn't make her as uneasy as when the shop's owner did so, like he was appraising her physical worth, but was more analytical, like he was checking her for familiar tells that would reveal her identity in his memory.

"Ah," he said, realisation dawning. "Miss Kuchiki." He bowed his head and held up a halting hand when she stepped into the shop. "If you'll just give me a moment, I'll go and see if the boss is up and around yet."

A stifled yawn from behind him told her that he was. "Don't bother," another voice interjected. "I'm already awake, for once." Another, longer, yawn.

Kisuke Urahara was the enigma of enigmas. His casual, laid-back attitude was meant to put people at ease, Rukia assumed. All it did was put her on guard. She got the feeling whenever she was around him that he was keeping something from her, something important, something that would affect her life. But for the life of her she could never work out what that was, nor could she get a straight answer out of him when she asked.

Despite the signs that he had apparently just woken up, he didn't look it. He stepped down gracefully from the upper landing and into a pair of wooden clogs without missing a beat. His dark green shirt and pants, with the black coat over the top that was reminiscent of a Soul Reaper captain's _haori_ with the colours inverted all looked in perfect order. He was already wearing his white-and-green striped bucket hat, with his messy blonde hair sticking out at all angles under it. His grey piercing eyes appraised her in that way she felt so uncomfortable with, before he started to rub the sleep from them.

"Good morning, Tessai, Jinta, Ururu," he started. "Welcome back to my shop, Miss Kuchiki. Your timing couldn't be more perfect if you tried. I just got a new shipment in the other day. How can I help you this afternoon?"

Clearly, it was still morning if the shop hadn't opened yet, and she hadn't yet been to school. OK, so maybe he wasn't completely awake. Or he was baiting her. She followed him to the back room, leaving the assistant and children to return to whatever they'd all been doing prior to her arrival.

"I need some more kikan shinki," she told the shop owner. "And some additional Somafixer."

"One kikan shinki?" Rukia nodded. "What grade?"

She sketched him a wry look. "The cheapest you have."

"Uh huh." Urahara whipped a calculator from a pocket Rukia hadn't even known he'd had. It was very much like the calculators she used at the human school. Made sense. "So one kikan shinki," he started, punching numbers into the pad, "and another batch of Somafixer." He frowned as he added the prices, and then looked up at her. "Um … look; I know this is none of my business …"

"But you're going to say it anyway," Rukia replied with a sigh.

Urahara nodded. "If you use too much of that stuff, you know it _can_ be toxic? If you oversynchronise with your gigai, you're in for a messy experience when it comes time to finally jump ship. Short of calling in the Kidō Corps or someone from Squad Four, you might not be able to separate yourself from the gigai."

"Yes, I'm aware of that," Rukia replied, looking away sheepishly. "It's just that, lately, my connection with it has grown pretty weak."

Rukia flexed her fingers experimentally; at least she tried to. Three of them didn't respond, and a fourth didn't respond as well as it should have. Only her thumb wiggled and folded the way she wanted it to. "It's become a lot more difficult to move this body."

She looked back up at him, with, admittedly, terrible timing. She saw the sly grin spread across his face, and immediately regretted mentioning the problem.

"You want me to check it out for you?" he offered. "Come on! I'll cut you a good deal."

Disgust crossed her face. "No, thank you!" she snapped.

That said, she worried about the fact that this man had assembled the gigai for her in the first place. He'd likely already seen every private inch of it. The thought made her shudder.

Dejection she knew was false swept upon his features. "Fine."

She sat down on a nearby crate that looked sturdy enough, grateful that her legs at least worked that much. "By the way," she said slowly, looking around. "Do you know if that special order I made has been delivered yet?"

"Yeah, it's here." He looked over his shoulder. "Hey, Ururu! Can you grab the special item out of storage, please?"

"Right away, Mister Kisuke!" came the timid girl's little voice from the front of the shop. She entered the room they were in a minute later holding a small, wrapped package. She handed it to Urahara, bowed respectfully to them both, and then dashed back out to the front.

Urahara hefted it before handing it to Rukia, who tore open some of the wrappings to look inside. "So this is the only one you could get, then?" She was a little disappointed, but that didn't matter.

"Oh, please," the shop owner replied defensively. "Give me a break. That's the second most popular one on the market at the moment. It wasn't all that easy to come by, either."

Rukia nodded and fished out enough money for all three of her purchases. She handed it over to Urahara, who counted it quickly, fished out change, and handed that over to her. She slipped the coins into her purse and then dumped the purse into her backpack along with the kikan shinki and the special item.

The Somafixer, she decided, could wait a moment. She popped a couple of the small, greenish-blue pills from the container into her mouth and swallowed them dry before Urahara thought to get her a glass of water. She downed that too, when it was finally offered, and then dropped the rest of the pills into her backpack as well, in the secret compartment she had sliced and stitched together in the inner lining of the pack.

"Better?" Urahara asked after a moment.

Rukia decided that she felt a little livelier, at the very least. She flexed her fingers on both hands and was glad to see them operating the way they should. She rolled her wrists, her shoulders, stood up and bent at the knees, arched her back. Everything seemed to be working. There was a new energy within her, surging through every muscle, infusing the gigai with her dismal spiritual energy. She felt stronger now than she ever had since losing her powers to Ichigo.

"Thank you, Mister Urahara," she said, bowing her head only for a moment.

"You're very welcome, Miss Kuchiki." He got to his feet as well and led her back to the front of the shop, then he put a hand on her shoulder and turned her gently to face him. "Now then …"

His serious tone put her on guard. She'd never heard him use it before. "Huh?"

"Go easy, will you?" he warned her. "You're not going to be able to hide it forever, all right? Someone from the Soul Society is bound to notice sooner or later that you've been here longer than you were assigned, and then it's only a short leap from there to discovering that your powers are almost all gone. You know what will happen."

"I know." She turned and started out of the shop, but then looked over her shoulder before she stepped over the threshold. "Thank you, again."


	19. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

She was extremely late in getting to school after her visit to Urahara's shop. She'd already missed the first two periods of the day, which meant that to maintain appearances she was going to have to catch up. More than likely, she'd just copy off Ichigo's work rather than do it on her own.

She still had a little money left. Maybe she could bribe Ichigo into doing her work for her? Somehow she doubted that he was the sort of human that would ever take a bribe. She hadn't known him terribly long, not compared to her friendships in the Soul Society, but she still thought she knew him quite well.

When she entered class, she saw Ichigo sitting in his chair one seat over and back from their giant classmate Chad. The latter was turned in his seat slightly so that he could participate in the conversation taking place between Ichigo, and his two other friends.

Rukia skipped over to them, expressing every ounce of the renewed energy the Somafixer pills had given her. "Good morning! Hi, everyone; how are you?"

"Hey," Mizuiro, the cheeky one with the short, dark hair, replied. "Good morning, Rukia."

Keigo Asano, who, in Ichigo's telling, was the more annoying and pushy of his friends, sighed happily at the sight of her, giving her the urge to roll her eyes. "Looking lovely as always, Rukia. You're positively glowing!"

She blushed. "This isn't like you," Mizuiro added thoughtfully. "It's already third period."

Rukia giggled, forever the typical teenage girl she was supposed to portray. "I'm sorry. Something urgent came up and I had to deal with it before I came here. By the way, Ichigo …" she looked down at him, and he turned his head to look over his shoulder at her. "May I steal you for a second?" she asked.

"Huh?" Ichigo replied, dumbfounded. "What do you want? If you want to talk, then let's do that here."

Maintaining the cheery façade, she gently pressed her left index and middle fingers against a pressure point near where his shoulder joined his neck. Instantly, he went rigid, twitched, and then toppled sideways out of his chair to the floor.

"Oh, Ichigo!" Rukia cried in mock horror. "What just happened? I better get you to the nurse's office!" She grabbed him by the arms and started dragging him along the floor to the door. She declined a few offers of help by nearby classmates that hadn't seen her drop him in the first place, telling them that she could handle it just fine. They went back to their business.

As soon as she was out of the room, she picked him up, testing in its entirety for the first time since taking the Somafixer pills. She was amazed at just how much strength she had. She'd always before had problems lifting Ichigo's body when he'd been in soul form.

She carried him outside, ignoring shocked and confused stares and mumblings from school peers that she passed along the way. They were all human, so anything they had to say about her mattered not in the slightest.

When she was outside, she set him down against the barrier by the courtyard and touched the pressure point again. Ichigo jerked, twitched again, and then jumped to his feet, grabbing her shirt but the collar and lifting her off the ground. He scowled at her, intensely annoyed at what she had done.

Personally, she thought it was a good reminder of just who and what she was.

"What the hell did you just do to me? Not another one of those paralysing spell things?" he demanded angrily.

"Nothing so complex. I used a simple technique aimed at incapacitating humans without having to waste spiritual energy on kidō," Rukia explained. "Put me down. Now."

She wasn't sure what it was that did it, the dangerous tone in her voice, the way she'd said "now", or just a desire not to argue with her today. For all she knew, it could have been a combination of the three. In either case, he lowered her back to the ground and let go of her shirt before taking a step back and a deep breath to calm himself.

Rukia watched him for a moment. She wasn't sure what it was about this human child that she found so interesting. It went beyond him having her powers that she stuck around. She enjoyed his company, when he wasn't being so pig-headed. His recklessness was dangerous, but at times it was just what was needed to get the job done. He was always quick with a barbed tongue ready to dish out any thoughtless comment or angry rebuke. And yet, she stuck around.

Shrugging, she slung her backpack from her shoulder, pulled the zipper, and retrieved the semi-wrapped package she'd purchased that morning. She tossed it to Ichigo and closed her backpack again before shouldering it.

"Here," she said. "That's yours."

"Really?" Ichigo said sceptically, an eyebrow raised. "You shouldn't have."

"Just open it." He did, tearing the remainder of the wrapper to reveal a long, thin, purple pill dispenser with a white plastic duck's head on one end and yellow, webbed duck's feet on the other.

"Uh …" He looked at it, turning it over in his hands. "It's a pez dispenser. Thanks?"

"What's a 'pez'?" Rukia asked.

"Never mind. If that's not what it is, then what is it supposed to be?" He turned it over in his hand again and read the label on the tube.

"Gikongan," she explained as she watched him try to puzzle it out. "Substitute soul pills—tablets that force souls from the flesh, much like the glove I have. Just swallow one pill and a substitute soul will enter the body so that the real one can roam free. If the time ever comes that you must face a Hollow while I'm not around, you can use these to transform into a Soul Reaper."

"It's got 'Soul Candy' printed right on here," Ichigo pointed out, turning the tube to show it to Rukia.

"Oh …" Rukia frowned. "That's only because the Soul Society Women's League complained. They didn't like gikongan; they said it wasn't cute enough, so they decided to change the name."

"All right." Pause. "Why's it a duck?"

And there it was. She scoffed derisively. "Shut up! I didn't even order that one, all right? I asked for Chappy the rabbit!" Then she realised she'd said that out loud and promptly shut her mouth.

"OK …" Pause again. "So you wanted one shaped like a rabbit, then, huh?"

Rukia turned to him and stomped her foot, pressing her fists to her hips and scowling at the nerve of him. "What's that? What did you just say?" she demanded. She could feel her face getting red with embarrassment. "How dare you mock me, you fucking imbecile!"

"No, no, no," Ichigo replied quickly, warding her with his hands. "It's not that. I just … didn't understand your explanation is all."

"Go ahead!" She was still angry. "Swallow one and it'll all be made clear."

Ichigo shrugged and, opening his mouth, pressed down on the duck's head. It contracted with a very toy-like squeak. The beak opened and a small, green candy ball shot out and into his open mouth. A moment passed, in which Rukia could sense the change in him, the awakening of the substitute soul, the detachment of Ichigo's own soul from his body.

The connection broke, and Ichigo was flung from his own body, wearing the black shihakushō of a Soul Reaper with his ridiculously large zanpakutō slung across his back. His body, meanwhile, pitched forward, colliding with the partition separating where she and Ichigo were from a sheltered pathway connecting buildings. Without Ichigo controlling it and with the substitute soul not yet in complete control, the body folded over the partition.

"Huh?" Ichigo was standing some way off, looking down at himself and patting his arms and chest. "I'm out of my body!"

"There's no need to be so surprised by that," Rukia told him with an annoyed narrowing of the eyes. "I told you that's what the gikongan would do. Inside that empty shell of a body"—she pointed—"resides a substitute soul. It will be in control while you're off fighting Hollows. No one will ever notice that your true soul is gone, and you won't be leaving your body around in public places when you need a quick transformation."

Ichigo's body twitched, and Rukia surmised that finally the soul within it had started to finally assert its control. Arms came up, and hands went down against the partition, bracing the body as it rose up to stand and then turned to face them with a neutral expression on his face. That wasn't _entirely_ like Ichigo, who seemed to always wear a scowl. But it would pass. It wasn't an uncharacteristically cheerful look.

No one would have believed that.

"What the fuck?"

_Oh, come on!_ Rukia thought irritably. She'd clearly explained the situation to him ahead of time. Hell, she'd even given him a full two minutes to absorb it all before commanding him to swallow the pill. Were humans so simple-minded that they really couldn't grasp something even if it was standing right in front of them?

She watched as the soul in Ichigo's body snapped them a crisp, pseudo-military salute. His body remained more or less in a relaxed stance, but the rigidity of his hand coming to his brow was something the finest general might have been proud of.

"Good afternoon," it said in Ichigo's voice. "My name is Ichigo Kurosaki, and it is very nice to meet you both. Early to bed, early to rise; that's my personal motto."

"Early to bed, early to _what_?" Ichigo demanded incredulously.

Rukia decided that the soul would definitely require a little training before being thrust into the job. Ichigo early to rise? That was a joke. But she refrained from saying so aloud or responding to it at all, lest she draw his wrath. Apparently, though, he thought it as big a joke as she.

"It's pretty amazing," she said smugly, hands on her hips. "Isn't it?"

Ichigo turned on her. "How the fuck do you consider that thing 'amazing'?" he demanded, pointing openly at his own body. "What the hell is that over there? How can it be me, if I'm me? I am me, right?"

"You're perfectly fine," she assured him. "You're—" She was interrupted by a sudden buzzing and beeping from her Soul Pager.

Quick as a flash, she had the device in hand, flipped open, and was reading the information on the little screen. She frowned. "Perfect timing, actually," she said, looking up at Ichigo's soul form. "There's a Hollow nearby. What do you say about leaving him here at school, in your body, while we head out and deal with this?" She gestured with the pager to punctuate her point.

"Are you nuts?"

"Let's get going." She ignored his question. In fact, she thought that perhaps it might have been rhetorical. But when he made no move to follow her, she stormed over and grabbed hold of the collar of his shihakushō, dragging him along.

* * *

The substitute soul watched as the female Soul Reaper dragged the male away, protesting loudly. He called out an assurance that everything would be fine and that he would attend the boy's classes. After all, he was in charge of the Soul Reaper's body now. It was his duty to …

The moment the two of them were out of sight, he stopped waving to them and dropped the cheery façade. "Take your time," he muttered.

He turned in a circle, slowly, taking in his surroundings for the first time. He'd never had actual eyes before with which to see. The experience was fantastic. He could see things he hadn't been able to see while trapped inside the pill. And he could hear things, now. He had never been able to hear things before. Nor had he ever felt the gentle breeze against skin he'd never had.

Everything was new.

Stretching seemed like a good idea to him then, if he was going to explore the limits of his new senses. And while he'd never done it before, the knowledge was there. He stretched all of the muscles in his legs, rolled his shoulders in their sockets and then stretched his biceps and triceps.

He hopped up and down on the spot for a moment, shaking the stiffness out of his arms and legs. And then, with his last hop, he lashed out with his right foot. It connected with the partition before him with a hard crash that bent the metal until it tore and broke apart.

Satisfied with himself, he smiled. "Now we're getting somewhere," he muttered to himself with the Soul Reaper's mouth. "I'm finally free."


	20. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

When the lunch bell rang, Orihime Inoue shot up out of her seat with a loud _whoop_. Neither Ichigo nor the new student, Rukia, had returned to class after the latter had carried the former out to the nurse's office. Orihime had given thought to checking on him to find out if he was OK. As it was, she had not seen what had happened to him, only seen the two of them in passing in the hallway beyond the classroom.

It surprised her somewhat to see someone of Rukia's size carrying someone of Ichigo's size anywhere, let alone for any length of time. The girl was a lot stronger than she looked, that was for sure.

But she had decided against checking on Ichigo. If he was hurt and wanted rest, the last thing he would want would be a disruption. And if he was asleep, she didn't want to risk waking him. So she left it.

"Lunch time!" she announced to the whole classroom in her cheeriest voice. And she felt every iota of that cheer.

"Orihime …" Her best friend, Tatsuki, looked up at her from where she sat, deadpan. "It's just lunch. It's not as big a deal as you make it out to be, you know."

Orihime's jaw dropped with the shock she felt at such a blasphemous statement. She pointed at her friend and frowned a little. "How can you say that?" she demanded. "Everyone knows that the only reason a healthy, red-blooded high school girl comes to school is to eat her lunch!"

Her friend sighed, shrugged, and then retrieved a box lunch from her backpack on the floor next to her table. "Sit down."

Orihime did so, her cheer returning somewhat now that the insanity had passed. She reached down to her own bag, undid the zipper, and pulled out the shopping bag inside that held the contents of her lunch today.

"What's for lunch today, Orihime?" Tatsuki asked.

The redhead wasn't exactly sure how much her friend genuinely wanted to know. She couldn't accurately gauge the tone of her voice to determine it. Some people in class openly chided her for her sense of food taste. Tatsuki seemed to, at times, at least pretend to be interested. This time, Orihime wasn't sure.

She decided to treat it like legitimate interest.

"Bread and red bean paste," she replied with a smile.

"Sounds good," her friend replied, deadpan again. No interest. Orihime didn't mind. "Unfortunately, my lunch is a little more ordinary."

She opened her lunch box to reveal its contents: a couple of rice balls, an egg and lettuce sandwich cut in half and with the crust trimmed off, and a small salad.

"I see." Orihime grabbed a mat from her backpack, zipped it back up, and placed the flexible mat on the table before her before setting down the full, unsliced loaf of bread and the tin of red bean paste.

She used the pull-ring on the lid of the tin to open it, and then held it up to her nose for a long whiff. So many possibilities occurred to her. She could slice the bread with a knife borrowed from a friend and then smear the paste over the top of it. She could just tear off chunks of bread and dip them in the paste before munching.

And then it occurred to her.

She grinned. "I can make my own red bean buns!"

"That's … that's an interesting choice," Tatsuki replied. She picked a rice ball from her box and took a bite of the sticky grains. Orihime could see a little grab meat and zucchini filling inside. Replace the crab meat with red bean paste, and it might have been a little more creative.

Wow. She was going to have to remember that the next time she made rice balls. Maybe if she ground up some dried bread into crumbs, mix in some red bean paste and pulped zucchini. A little bit of chocolate and mayonnaise would take it that further step into the bold territories she enjoyed treading so much.

So many possibilities!

"Orihime?"

She looked up in the middle of taking a large bite out of the corner of the bread loaf. Tatsuki's attention was on her lunch for the moment. And, in fact, it hadn't even been her voice. She looked to the left to see one of her other friends standing there.

With reddish-brown hair, brown eyes and spectacles that only seemed to increase her attractive quality, Chizuru Honshō stood there looking down at Orihime with a smile, holding her own lunch in front of her. Orihime liked Chizuru quite a bit. In fact, she considered Chizuru her second best friend. She was a very lively girl, seemingly always cheerful. Very much like how Orihime was herself. She guessed that was why she liked the other girl.

Tatsuki was sullen as often as she was cheerful, and that was just the way Orihime liked her. She had a quality about her that was straightforward, but to a point. Chizuru's straightforwardness was just a little more forward.

Unfortunately for Orihime, Chizuru and Tatsuki never saw eye-to-eye. She didn't know why. Vague comments, rumours about Chizuru that circulated the school's verbal pipeline which Orihime paid no attention to. Rumours were as harmful as a fist, at times. And even if they were true, so what? She was still a nice girl.

"Why don't you and I eat together?" the girl asked.

Orihime quickly chewed the bread in her full mouth and then swallowed the lot. She nodded. "Sure. Have a seat."

The other girl didn't take her eyes from Orihime as she dragged a seat over to her table and sat down next to her. She set her lunch down on the table, still looking at Orihime, and opened the box. Orihime saw out of the corner of her eye that Tatsuki was eyeing the new arrival warily, still slowly chewing the first bite of her rice ball.

"You've … uh …" Chizuru started, nodding at the red-haired girl. "You've got crumbs around your mouth." She blushed.

"Huh?" Orihime reached up and, with the back of her hand, brushed the bread crumbs from her face, making sure that they all ended up on the mat on the table, and not on the floor. She was very careful about that. "Better?"

"Less cute," the other girl said, still blushing, "but yes."

A commotion across the classroom suddenly drew the attention of all three of them. Orihime looked over to see what the issue was, only to see Ichigo perched on the window sill, facing inward. How he'd gotten there was anyone's guess. Orihime hadn't seen him come back into the room at any stage. She got up, followed by Tatsuki, and walked over to the group of her classmates that was congregating by the window where Ichigo was.

"Excuse me," the boy started, looking around at them all. "This is group three of the ninth grade class, right?"

Orihime was on the verge of responding that he should know that it was when Tatsuki pushed her way to the front of the group and beat her to it. "Wait a second. How the hell did you get there?"

Ichigo's expression became one of slight confusion, and then he cracked a small smile at her. "That's a silly question, isn't it?" he responded. Orihime frowned a little, half-hiding behind Tatsuki. Something didn't feel right about this. "I jumped up here from the courtyard. You saw it with your own eyes, didn't you?"

"Actually," Tatsuki started, frowning more heavily than Orihime, "I didn't. I was over there." She pointed to where they had been seated a moment ago, and then crossed her arms defiantly. "So how did you get there?"

"I told you. I jumped here from down there," Ichigo replied with a nod over his own shoulder. His smile was still a sly one, and something about it made the hair on the back of Orihime's neck stand on end. "Pretty amazing, wouldn't you say. I'm not sure I entirely believe it myself."

"I bet you crawled over from the class next to us," one of the boys accused, pointing at him.

Another next to the first touched him on the shoulder. "No way!" he whispered conspiratorially. "He jumped up from the yard!"

"Did you see him mdo it?"

"Well … no. I wasn't watching."

Orihime wasn't listening to the rest of the argument between the two. She was watching what looked to be Ichigo looking around at everyone standing by looking at him. Something about the way he was acting just wasn't right. He was too … cheerful? No. Easy. He was too easy. And he was too showy. What was wrong with this? Ichigo was neither easy nor showy.

His eyes came to a stop on hers, and then flickered down a little for an instant before he grinned and jumped down from the window sill. He approached her, all swagger and confidence that didn't suit him at all. Then, he stepped up onto a chair, then from there to the table in front of her, and dropped to a knee to take her hand.

"Well, hello there, gorgeous lady," he said softly to her. His breath felt and smelled the same as she remembered it. The scent of him was heady, strong. His eyes were still piercing, but somehow also soft. And his hand was a little cold, and gentle.

What was wrong?

She blushed.

"I don't believe we've had the pleasure," Ichigo said. That in itself made no sense either. "May I have the honour of your name?" Leaning forward, he brought her hand to his lips and planted the gentlest of kisses upon it. The blush deepened, and she knew her whole face would be red now.

Someone behind her squealed in protest.

Tatsuki moved fast. She spun around behind Ichigo, looping her arms under his. Orihime knew that grab. Tatsuki had told her it was called a full nelson, and it was a difficult hold to break from Ichigo's position. He was dragged away from Orihime, his heels scraping against the carpeted floor.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, you goddamn imbecile?" she screeched in his ear, outraged at his audacity.

Orihime was sure of it now. Whatever it was inside of her was telling her that this was not Ichigo she was looking at was right. She couldn't explain how she knew it. She just knew it. Instinct. It wasn't just that he didn't act like Ichigo—god, she couldn't get over the heady smell of him and the feel of his lips softly touching the back of her hand—there was just some sort of aura around him that wasn't right.

Ichigo tilted his head back when Tatsuki's attempt to drag him away ended with the backs of her knees bumping into a table. "Hey … you know you're not that bad looking yourself now that I've got a closer look at you."

Orihime's heart leapt in her chest, almost to her throat, it felt. Another protest issued from someone in the back of the group, and Ichigo, quick as a flash, kissed Orihime's friend lightly on the cheek and smiled.

Shock froze her in place. Her grip on Ichigo loosened, and he slipped free of her without a second thought or a glance back.

It's not Ichigo, Orihime reminded herself with the shake of her head.

"Son of a goddam …" Tatsuki growled when she regained her composure. And for a situation like this, her composure meant a rage that required avenging. Orihime took a step back as her friend charged at Ichigo. "Die!" she screamed angrily.

"Wait—what?" Ichigo turned to see her coming just in time and sidestepped to avoid her head ending up in his stomach. "Watch out!"

"Tatsuki!" Orihime called to her friend. "Calm down!"

But she was beyond calm.

It's not Ichigo, Orihime reminded herself when the image of that kiss flashed unbidden into her mind. She closed her eyes tightly and forced the image away before opening them again.

Tatsuki recovered fast. She stopped, spun, and grabbed the nearest table to her before hurling it at him.

"Shit!" Ichigo hissed as he ducked under the flying mass of wood and steel.

It sailed over his head and crashed through the window. The glass shattered, and the table fell to the yard below. The next table had less force behind it. Still, Orihime watched as it sailed across the room and came crashing into a coupel of other desks by the window without any of them toppling through it when Ichigo dodged it as well.

Apparently not satisfied, she picked up a third.

"What the hell?" Ichigo demanded. His brow tightened. Even that was an unfamiliar expression. "All I did was kiss you on the cheek. Why is that such a big deal? You're not a little kid anymore, you know?"

"SHUT UP!" Tatsuki roared. She charged over—encumbered by the table she dragged along with her. When she reached Ichigo, she lifted it and swung it in a vicious arc aimed at his head.

"Tatsuki!" Orihime screamed. "You'll kill him!"

It's _not_ Ichigo, she told herself again silently.

He dodged away again, coming around behind her and then backing away a few steps. To avoid the follow-through as she spun to face him again.

A click; then the door to the room swung open to reveal the new girl standing there, her dark eyes ablaze and her hands on her hips. "Stop what you're doing!" she shouted over all of the commotion.

Tatsuki froze. Ichigo froze. Everyone turned to look at Rukia—Ichigo's stance made it look like he was waiting for another opponent to lash out at him. And from the look in Rukia's eyes, Orihime expected something along those lines herself.

"It's over. You're coming with me," she said, still glaring at Ichigo.

His response was to turn and make a break for the window that had been shattered by the table earlier.

"Watch out, Ichigo!" Rukia called on his heels.

"Right," Ichigo replied. And yet he kept running for the window, flat-out. Orihime watched, horrified. He was going to leap right out the window.

Except that he didn't. He stopped dead a couple of meters from the window, looking at it as though the thought had finally dawned on him what he was going to do and it terrified him.

"You've got nowhere left to run!"

That was Ichigo's voice.

But Ichigo wasn't speaking.

What was going on?

Ichigo turned to look at Rukia, and then looked back to the window. He smiled, then shifted his feet, positioning for a fight.

It struck Orihime as odd that he would prepare for a fight by facing away from his opponents. Wasn't showing your back to an opponent one of the silliest things to do in a fight? Even if you had a plan in mind, you never started a fight like that. It was one of the most basic rules Tatsuki had drilled into her.

Suddenly, Ichigo kicked out towards the window. The momentum of the kick pulled his body around into a spin and, after he planted that foot, he lashed out with the other. Again, since he wasn't facing anyone, he hit nothing.

But Orihime noticed the oddest thing. His pants leg near the ankle was bunched up in an odd way—like someone had a hold of his leg in that exact spot. But there was no one there. Nothing there. It was just air between Ichigo and the classroom.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Orihime mentally erased the profanity from her mind, but it still didn't pass her notice that while the voice was Ichigo's, his lips were again not moving.

Oh! He's practicing ventriloquism. She hadn't thought of that. She hadn't even known he was into that. Mind, there wasn't much she _did_ know about Ichigo, other than the fact that he was handsome and kind and …

She shook her head. No. It's not Ichigo! The sound of someone grunting after being hit followed another kick by what she had come to realise was not Ichigo.

"Ichigo …"

"Why is he kicking the air like that?" someone said over her right shoulder. She turned her head slightly to see Chizuru standing there, Tatsuki on her other side now, wide-eyed.

"Who gives a shit?" the latter snarled, still incensed.

Ichigo jumped up in the air and spun in an impressive kick Orihime hadn't even known he was athletic enough to pull off so well. Another pained grunt greeted her ears, followed a split second later by a loud crash as tables all the way up the middle of the room went flying to the sides, as if someone had just been sent crashing through them. Several of the girls around Orihime screamed in fright at the sight. A couple of the guys flinched and started murmuring amongst themselves.

"What's happening?" another of Orihime's friends, the shy, withdrawn Michiru, asked.

"Maybe it's a poltergeist!" Chizuru cried.

A grunt from just off to Orihime's right drew her attention. While everyone else was looking over to where Ichigo was standing, arms crossed and staring back at them, and Rukia, who looked ready to charge over to him and knock him out, Orihime looked down at the desk nearest her and saw it shift slightly like something was pushing against it.

And something was … kind of. Squinting a little, she could just make out a hand, a hand that was bruised and scratched. That hand was attached to the end of an arm covered by the long sleeve of what looked like a black kimono. And that arm was joined at the shoulder to a torso also clad in that kimono. And on top of that torso was a head with Ichigo's face, crinkled up, lips twisted in a pained gasp as he tried to push up from the tangle of tables. His vivid red hair sat in a mess atop his head.

But she could barely make him out. Like he was there, and he wasn't there, all at the same time. What on Earth was she seeing? Was it his spirit? Was his body possessed by a demon or a devil? That would certainly explain the off feeling Orihime had had about him ever since she had seen him squatting in the window sill only minutes before.

But then, why was his soul out of his body? Typically, a possession didn't do that. At least, not in any of the accounts she'd read in her boredom one day months ago. And an even bigger question … why could she see him? It was clear that no one else could. And, a moment ago, she couldn't even see him. Or perhaps it was because she could just barely make him out now when he was close, that when he had been across the room she hadn't been able to notice him.

She'd seen evidence of his being there: his voice when he wasn't speaking, the bunched up pants leg that had looked like someone had grabbed it.

Why could she see him, and no one else could?

She looked over at Ichigo standing at the front of the room again just in time to see him shoot a look at Rukia, followed by a victorious smile and a wave.

"See ya around," he said cheerfully before dashing to the window and leaping through it.


	21. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

Ichigo didn't stop running until he'd followed his body clear across town. Rukia stopped beside him, hands on her knees as she drew in deep breaths to compensate for lack thereof that their marathon sprinting had caused.

The two of them were in the industrial district now. Warehouses were plentiful here. Some of them were abandoned, some of them operational and full of workers and crates of goods. The one that Ichigo and Rukia entered was clearly of the former. Its windows were shattered in their panes, the doors held _loosely_ closed by a rusted chain. They'd been able to just slip in between the doors, under the chain, without much effort on their part.

Ichigo had been able to somehow sense where his body had taken off to, even though he had lost sight of it not too long after chasing it out of his classroom. He still hurt from when he'd been sent crashing through all those tables. But he gritted his teeth and bore it. When he caught up with that good-for-nothing substitute soul, he was going to make it regret having done that to him.

"Fuck!" he swore suddenly. "He got away. I got away. Whatever the hell!"

"Well …" Rukia huffed beside him. She arched her back and clutched at a stitch in her side. Ichigo was only partly sympathetic. "This doesn't do us any good."

"What?" he said, incredulous. He pointed an accusing finger at her and scowled. "I don't have time for your Soul Reaper bullshit," he snarled. "This is all your fault, you know! Now I have to capture him before he does anything _else_ stupid. I mean … capture me. I mean—Goddamnit! I don't even know what the hell I mean!

"But you saw it too, right?" his expression was pleading now. "The way he started that riot in class? He probably used my body to take advantage of the girls; Orihime, Tatsuki. He probably k–k–k–"

"Kissed them?" Rukia offered.

"Yes!" Ichigo replied, mortified by the thought.

"I'm pretty sure that actually happened before we got there. I don't know her very well, but I get the impression your friend Tatsuki wouldn't have reacted so brutishly to anything less."

"Don't say that!" Ichigo cried out. "My life is now officially _done_!"

He dragged his fingers through his hair and, looking up at the roof above them, screamed out hihs frustration. How could he go back to school the next day after he got his body back after what that substitute soul had done? He couldn't. It was that simple.

"Oh, please," Rukia admonished. "You're going to have to just get over it, OK? Isn't a kiss just a form of greeting? I thought it was common. And they are both friends of yours, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal, right?" Pause, then just as Ichigo was about to round on her again, she continued. "This book I was just reading the other day actually detailed _far_ worse things that could happen to a girl. Shouldn't you be grateful none of that happened?"

His scowl returned. "Will you shut the hell up? This is a goddamn catastrophe! That … thing … came onto my classmates." He turned from her and sighed, trying to release some of his pent up frustration. "What the hell kind of books are you reading, anyway?"

If he did get his body back, he was just going to have to go to another school. That was all there was to it. He was just going to have to go home to his dad and tell him that things weren't working out at his current school and that he needed to start fresh somewhere else. What other choice was there? He wasn't just going to waltz into class the next day and try to act like nothing had happened today. How could he possibly pull that off? If Tatsuki didn't try to kill him, everyone's constant stares would get to him. They would all be wondering when his next streak of insanity would start, when he would break and start acting like a crazy person again.

"Forget it," he said, somewhat calmer now that his mind was made up. He turned back to her. "Are these substitute souls supposed to act out like this? Why the hell would you get me that thing?"

"I'm not convinced he's a normal substitute soul." The response was so certain that Ichigo had a hard time imagining her being anything other than fully convinced. But he had long since grown to accept her word as it was. Other than a few tiny omissions or white lies on his behalf, she hadn't really set out to deceive anyone. He reckoned that it just wasn't in her nature.

"Then what is he?"

Rukia sat down on the dirty floor, keeping her skirt modestly beneath her and her legs together as she leaned back against a support pole that looked to be made from solid steel. After a moment of her sitting there without speaking, Ichigo took the hint and sat down next to her, his legs crossed and his elbows on his knees.

"About a hundred years ago, give or take," she started after a few minutes of silence passed them, "the Soul Society initiated a new project that they called 'Spearhead'."

"Spearhead?"

She nodded. "It was intended as a way to supplement our forces against the Hollows. They grew artificial souls that they had then had modified for combat and placed those souls into the dead after their own souls had parted. That said, these souls were only used in the human world, because they could not enter a soul in the Soul Society, and gigai were a thing sparingly created and even then only for Soul Reaper use. The plan was to use these modified souls as soldiers against the Hollows, thereby lessening the risk to Soul Reapers a little, sometimes even negating the necessity of a Soul Reaper.

"It was a reprehensible plan," she added with a derisive snort. "All of the souls that had been created for the purpose of Project Spearhead were altered after their creation. Once inside a body, one aspect of their host was then made superhuman. Strength, speed, stamina, fighting ability, intelligence. Any one of those aspects. The result was an artificial soul that was built for battle—a mod soul. Do you understand?"

Ichigo nodded. It was simple enough to grasp. The Soul Society had been willing to stoop to any lows, it seemed, to battle its enemies. That made them no better than any human. And yet, Ichigo couldn't help but be amused. From Rukia's demeanour towards him when they'd first met, constantly berating his humanness and making herself seem far superior without—and sometimes with—actually saying it outright, Ichigo had come to the conclusion that such an attitude was commonplace amongst her kind.

So to find out that they were just as fallible as humans, just as prone to idiotic decisions made in desperation, was somewhat humorous to him.

"The Spearhead project was ultimately rejected," Rukia went on, seemingly oblivious to Ichigo's internal amusement. "It was decided that because it would force corpses to fight, it was an immoral act unworthy of the Soul Society. In the end, all of the modified souls that were still in the incubation stages were ordered destroyed. Not a single one of them ever saw combat against a Hollow. Very few made it into bodies themselves, and very few of those bodies were even modified before the program was shut down.

"It seems, however, that some of them are still out there."

"So let me get this straight …" Ichigo started, shooting her a sidelong glance. "You're telling me that the guy … the soul … that's inside my body right now was created by your people in the Soul Society?"

Rukia nodded.

"And now they've just decided that they want him wiped out for the sin of being exactly what they created him to be in the first place?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying," she said with another nod.

"And … and you're telling me that you can honestly accept that?"

She looked at him—glared really, which cooled his expression a little. "Whether I accept it or not is beside the point, Ichigo," she said angrily. "The Soul Society commanded his destruction by law. Don't ever forget that the laws of the Soul Society are _not_ arbitrary. You cannot just decide to ignore them on the basis of your humanity."

There she went, being all high and mighty again, he thought.

"As long as you act in the capacity of the Soul Reaper, you _will_ uphold the Soul Society's laws. Those laws have been put in place for the protection and the well-being of all human souls." Quick as a flash, she was back on her feet and patting the dirt off the rear of her skirt. "Let's go," she said without looking at him. "You _do_ want your body back, don't you?"

As Ichigo got back to his feet and patted the dirt of his own behind, he couldn't help but feel some sympathy for the mod soul. Being reckless and stupid in Ichigo's body now paled in comparison to what the poor soul had escaped.

Ichigo wondered what he was feeling, walking around in his body. He wondered if he was finally experiencing life for the first time, enjoying the things that humans often took for granted.

These mod souls … they had been created at random, then destroyed at random, simply to win a war that Ichigo was barely grasping the scope of. And yet, somehow this one mod soul had survived the destruction order. Somehow, he'd found his way into a batch of gikongan, the very batch Rukia had purchased for Ichigo's use.

Now he had a body. But he still had to keep running.

_I can't imagine what it must be like for him_, Ichigo thought as they left the warehouse.

* * *

Heights were a wonderful thing, the mod soul decided on the spot. He was currently balancing along the top of a three meter rail fence that ran around the roof of a building on the school grounds within which he was loitering. A few spins and flips while on the railing felt great. But he kept it to a minimum.

The students here were a few years younger than the ones at Ichigo Kurosaki's school. These girls were of no interest with their flat chests and underdeveloped features. And while the boys at Ichigo's school had held no interest for the mod soul, these boys were even less interesting, with their lacking ethics and their complete disregard for school authority.

In fact, even as he watched, he saw three children sneaking away from the field where a class was hitting a small white ball with a long wooden bat.

The three children were alike in only one aspect: each of them had a small, more or less rectangular, blue device in their hands and they were laughing and chatting amongst each other. Aside from that, two of them were thin while the third was rather fat. One had brown hair that was smoothed back, while another had lighter hair and another's was cropped close to his scalp. One had a few freckles on his cheeks, one had square glasses, and the fat boy's nose was upturned slightly, almost like a pig.

"Phys-Ed is a waste of time, if you ask me," the thin boy with the glasses declared as they approached.

The mod soul jumped down from his perch to the roof of the building, hiding behind where the stairs from inside came out.

"Yeah," another of the boys said, "this is absolutely the best way to bunk class."

Some strange beeping sounds and other noises were coming from the direction of the children. They were closer now, but as they spoke they didn't sound like they were coming any closer.

"Damnit! I can't believe I lost again!" The first boy said suddenly, drawing laughter from the other two. "What the hell is wrong with this thing? I created you didn't I? Now do what I tell you!"

"Just kill him off," the second boy responded.

A spark of anger lit inside the mod soul. _Just kill him off._ How very much like the Soul Society. And here he'd been thinking that humans were cooler.

"Yeah," a third voice added between heavy breaths. The fat kid, the mod soul assumed. "Anyone who doesn't obey their masters should die!"

Wild beeping from the object in one of the boys' hands, followed by a few more of those odd noises. "Jeez!" the second boy exclaimed. "You killed him!"

"Who cares?" the first kid replied nonchalantly. Every word from their damned mouths did nothing to quell the anger building inside the mod soul. He was growing more and more infuriated every time one of them spoke. "I'll just make a better one."

These brats were no better than the goddamned Soul Society. Was every human in this world so callous? He could only assume so. His anger was growing exponentially. He couldn't contain it. Without thinking, he spun and punched the concrete wall of the staircase housing. The material cracked around his fist, and a spike of pain shot up his arm from one of the knuckles.

Broken, he felt. It didn't matter.

He stepped out from behind the structure and glared at the three mindless children.


	22. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

There was a _thunk_ as the heavy object Urahara had been carrying was set down on the floor of his shop. It was tightly wrapped in white bandages to conceal it, and the shoulder strap attached to its length in two places would make it easier to transport when they were on their way.

Tessai was already ready, kneeling nearby awaiting instructions. Jinta was standing near him, impatiently kicking a goods crate with the toe of his boot with his arms crossed over his chest. He shot Urahara a withering glance. The boy didn't like to wait.

Ururu stuck her head out from behind the wall separating the front of the shop from the back. The rest of her soon followed when she noticed that the three of them were ready to leave, and she slowly approached Urahara with her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes not once leaving the floor. Despite the direction of her gaze, Urahara could clearly see the tears still in her eyes.

"Um … M–mister Kisuke, s–sir?" she started. She looked up, and then back down so quickly Urahara was almost sure he'd imagined it.

"Um. I am _so_ sorry, Mister Kisuke. I know this is all my fault. I hope that you're not too mad at me."

He smiled warmly then, though she couldn't see it. He couldn't possibly hate the little girl, no matter how bad the mistake she made. The same went for Jinta, despite his flaws. It just wasn't in Urahara's nature to hate easily. True, there was at least one man he could name with certainty that he _did_ hate, but that man was safe from him, and he from that man. Neither could touch the other. But it did no good to dwell on the past.

He reached to the girl, ignoring her instinctive cringe. The poor thing had grown up in a harsh environment. She and Jinta both. And while he had come out of it with his abrasive, take-no-crap attitude, she had come through it as much opposite to him as possible. She was a very withdrawn little girl, often picked on by Jinta and others, though Urahara knew that in secret Jinta loved her like a little sister. But he knew better than to mention it, lest it earn him another bloody nose.

He placed his hand gently on Ururu's head and gently ran his fingers through her hair to reassure her. "Don't be afraid, Ururu," he told her softly. "All of us are in this together. You made a mistake. Big deal." He drew her into a one-armed hug that was made only slightly awkward by their difference in height. "I know that you didn't do it on purpose. Everyone makes mistakes in their life, or in their work. Don't you worry your little head about it, OK? I'll take care of everything."

Ururu started sobbing, clutching to his middle and letting her tears fall into his dark coat. Urahara didn't need to ask her to know that they were tears of joy at his not being angry with her. Girls were funny that way. All he did was continue to stroke her hair, letting her cry as much as she needed to.

"It's all going to be OK, Ururu," he promised her.

A slight cough drew his attention back to where Tessai was kneeling. Though far from an unfeeling, understanding man, Tessai was clearly eager to have this business seen to as quickly as possible, before things grew out of control. Emotional damage control came second to the mission, in Tessai's mind. Urahara knew that he would play a large role in cheering Ururu up later.

"All right," he said to his assistant. "Let's go and collect the merchandise, shall we?"

Tessai bowed his head slightly. "Yes, sir."

"Finally!" Jinta said with a final kick to the crate. He picked up his modified bat and slung it over his shoulder.

* * *

Ichigo sprinted hard when he saw what the mod soul was doing. Three grade school kids were slacking off on the roof; ditching class, he guessed. And the mod soul was charging at them like it was going to attack.

What could have set him off? Ichigo had no idea. All he knew was he had to stop it before the attack happened. He couldn't let those children be hurt by a renegade soul in his body. It would be unforgivable.

The mod soul stopped, pivoted on Ichigo's left foot, and then lashed out with the right in a devastating kick that would have connected with the head of the tallest of the three.

A burst of speed put Ichigo into place the instant before it connected, and he coiled back his arm and flung it forward. His fist connected with his leg, and the kick went wide. But the mod soul recovered quick, and backpedalled a couple of steps to put some distance between them. It was a smart move, and it gave Ichigo the time to think about what he would do next.

His ultimate goal was to regain control of his body and expel the nuisance of a mod soul. It wasn't just that he didn't want the renegade to cause trouble looking like him, it was that he was growing increasingly uncomfortable with being out of his body for such a length of time. It was something he'd felt a couple of times before, when tracking certain Hollows had taken him a while longer than either he or Rukia had expected. But he hadn't mentioned the discomfort to her. More than likely, she would shrug it off.

"Who the hell is that guy?" one of the boys behind him whispered to his peers. Ichigo didn't bother to respond, because he knew that they could not hear him. He also knew that who they were referring to was the mod soul, who they could see.

"Ichigo!" Rukia called out. Ichigo had left her quite a ways behind when he'd finally sensed the spiritual presence of the mod soul in his body. He'd been in such a hurry to catch up, he hadn't even stopped to let her climb onto his back.

Now that she had caught up, she looked very much out of breath. She was almost doubled over again, breathing heavy, taking in great gulps of air. He wondered what was taking her so long in recovering the powers he'd taken from her.

That soon became the least of his worries, however, when the mod soul decided that the temporary lapse in concentration was the best moment to strike. He charged at Ichigo, kicked out with first his left foot at Ichigo's abdomen. Quickly, Ichigo dodged backwards and avoided the two rapid kicks, and then dropped to his knees to avoid the high roundhouse that nearly took him in the temple.

He rolled to the side, hearing the rattling of his sword as the hilt and guard scraped against the roof. He shoved off to his feet and then ducked around behind the mod soul.

"You won't catch me off guard like back in the classroom," he warned the imposter. "If I stay calm, I'm going to see every one of your moves before you even make them."

With a five-pace running start, the mod soul flew at him with his legs out again. But Ichigo grabbed him by the ankles and flung him to the side before spinning to face him again and taking up a defensive stance without drawing his sword. The mod soul came at him again, kicking high at his face. He blocked them with his forearms, trying his best to block out the pain of the strikes. The mod soul was strong, there was no doubt. Ichigo was lucky his arms hadn't broken under those kicks.

"Ichigo, look out!"

Ichigo trusted her judgement and leapt to the side just in time to avoid something large and white slamming into the roof where he'd been standing only an instant before. He rolled twice before getting back to his feet and looking at where the impact had left a crater in the concrete. The mod soul had moved off as well, and was now even farther away from where Ichigo and Rukia were standing. The kids were nowhere in sight.

But in the space between Ichigo and his foe was another foe he hadn't expected to encounter.

A Hollow.

It was long and segmented; its body resembled a massive centipede in both appearance and length. Its wide mask and the glowing yellow eyes behind it drew Ichigo's attention almost at once. He'd long adopted Rukia's advice of going straight for the head. It was the most vulnerable spot of the Hollow, comprised of both the heart and the brain.

The Hollow was coiled around and around in the crater it had made, its head swinging back and forth slowly as it tried to decide who to attack first: Ichigo … or, in its mind, his twin. Or did Hollows recognise a mod soul when faced with it?

"It's extraordinarily rude of you not to let me devour you," the Hollow growled at Ichigo, recognising the Soul Reaper threat he represented. "It would have been much quicker than what I now have in mind for you." It made a sickening sound in the back of its throat; an almost pleasurable sound like its own twisted interpretation of a kitten's purr.

"Sorry, bud," Ichigo said, reaching over his shoulder and gripping the hilt of his sword tightly. He yanked it from its scabbard and brought it a round to a guard position. "I really do hate to disappoint, though. Maybe I can compensate you with a taste of steel."

"My god; you didn't just say that!" Rukia groaned somewhere behind him. Ichigo promptly ignored her.

The Hollow shifted in place, and Ichigo judged by the way its segments were flexing that it was getting ready to strike out at him. He'd expected that, in truth. His being a Soul Reaper would have registered him as a bigger threat that would require immediate attention before he turned on the others. Eventually, it would have recognised Rukia as a Soul Reaper in a gigai … perhaps. But would it have a precedent for knowing what the mod soul was? Rukia had said that none of them had seen combat, and that a gikongan's role was to occupy the gigai of a Soul Reaper on extended missions in the world of the living a safe distance from any battle.

He widened his stance a little, bent at the knees slightly. The stance he was now in would be good for movement or defence; if he couldn't defend the Hollow's first strike, he could at least dodge out of the way before it killed him.

It lurched forward unnaturally with a guttural roar, and then spun around and flung one of its stubbly, spiked legs.

The leg grew in length, the point possibly even further than it already was, forming a deadly tip as it sliced through the air at—

"Watch it!" Ichigo shouted.

He dashed forward, dodged left around another leg that extended like a speeding lance in his direction. He sliced down through the leg, felt the brief resistance of his sword cutting through Hollow flesh, and continued without skipping a step. Another two legs shot through the air towards him from different points on the long Hollow's body. Ichigo dodged over one, jumped on the other and used it as a springboard that propelled him towards the third arm that was coming back around to skewer his body in the back.

The mod soul spun in mid-air. Ichigo couldn't see anything that it could possibly use in that position as a point of contact for the move, and that surprised him. _Just_ how powerful was that soul?

The soul lashed out with its left leg, knocking the tentacle-like leg away from him. It didn't see the second one, though, and as Ichigo sliced clean through the one the mod soul had just kicked away, the second skewered his body's shoulder.

He grimaced, and growled angrily as he sliced through the second one and used the Hollow's segmented body as another springboard. He wrapped his left arm around his body as he went past and carried it away from the Hollow's reach.

He landed solidly on the roof a dozen meters from the monster, which was now roaring angrily at having been deprived of its prey.

The mod soul collapsed to his knees, clutching at the wound and gasping back the pain.

"Why?" it asked, looking up at Ichigo's eyes. Ichigo saw confusion there, but none of the gratitude he'd expected to see. "Why are you helping me?"

Angrily, he reached down and gripped the collar of his shirt, pulling him up to his feet until they were face-to-face.

"You think I'm helping you?" he demanded, shouting. "That's _my_ body and _my_ shirt that you're messing up! Do you have any fucking idea how vulnerable my body is against Hollows? And you just decided to take one on? If you can't fight it without getting yourself hurt, then run the fucking hell away!"

"What the hell is your problem?" the mod soul shouted back in his face.

"You're supposed to be this bad-ass mod soul, aren't you?" Ichigo demanded, releasing his collar and shoving him back a step. "I assumed that came with _some_ intelligence!"

"EAT!" The roar of the Hollow interrupted whatever snarky remark the mod soul might have flung back at him. The Hollow charged at them both then, uncoiling its long body and striking out, hoping to get them both in a single attack.

Ichigo was having none of that. "Eat this, worm," he muttered as he brought his sword swinging straight upwards in the Hollow's path. He felt the resistance, saw the clean slice up the middle of its skull. It looked deep enough to be fatal for the monster. And he also saw his body's foot connect with the skull at the same time.

The Hollow keeled back, its mask and head fading away along with the rest of its body until there was nothing left but the invisible spiritual energy that, eventually, would also fade after it left for the Soul Society.

The mod soul fell to his rump; putting his hands on the roof behind his and leaning back a little as he breathed a sigh of relief. Ichigo strode over, looked down at him, and then sheathed his sword before he sat down as well.

To be honest, he was a little surprised that the mod soul had even stuck around to help. He'd seen the attack that had been aimed at those kids. He'd been intent on some serious harm there, possibly even to the point of killing them. What had set him off, Ichigo still did not know. But then the Hollow had shown up. The kids had disappeared. The mod soul had fought alongside Ichigo, instead of against him.

Ichigo had to wonder about that sudden turnaround. Did he, as a mod soul, fall prey to the instinct that told him to fight the Hollow? Or had he consciously made the choice to help, despite his hatred for all not like him?

"Why did you stick around?" he asked, curious. "I came to the assumption by your attack on those kids that you'd gladly have seen any of us devoured by that Hollow. Why fight it?"

One hand came up and clutched at the wounded shoulder again, then the mod soul looked up at Ichigo and frowned. "That's a bit of a stupid question, isn't it?" he asked rudely. When Ichigo opened his mouth to respond in kind, the mod soul continued. "If I hadn't helped out, that thing might have killed you and the girl. And then it would have gone after those kids. No one should have the right to kill _anyone_!" That last was said with bitterness, anger.

Ichigo understood. He felt more or less the same way. "Right after I was created, the Soul Society decided that they would be better off without me. The order came down that all of us were to be destroyed at once. No questions asked. No appeals. Just do it, get it done, and move on. Essentially, I was given a death sentence the day after I was born. Can you possibly imagine the horror?" Ichigo shook his head. Honestly, he couldn't. He glanced over his shoulder at Rukia, standing by with her arms crossed as she listened to the mod soul as well. "I waited," he went on. "I waited for them to come and end me. I trembled with fear inside that little pill, waiting for death. Day after day, I was forced to endure, helpless, the destruction of the others. I couldn't see a thing, but I could feel them disappearing all around me, and I could hear their screams in my head … or, well, what passes for a head."

That struck Ichigo as odd. "How do you know any of that if you couldn't see anything that was happening around you?"

"I could still hear," the mod soul replied with a small smile. "I heard the Soul Reapers discussing the execution orders."

He stood up, and Ichigo watched as he made his way over to the rail nearby and leaned against it, gazing out over the school grounds. After a minute, he joined him.

"My escape was more luck than anything. The Soul Reaper that was supposed to handle my execution must have been having a terrible day, because I somehow ended up in a shipment of gikongan by mistake. And even though I was amongst those that were safe from the fate that had befallen me and the others like me, I was still terrified of being discovered. I spent each day in fear, year after year, hoping that no one would ever discover me and destroy me.

"But I was still alone for years. I couldn't hear the voices of the substitute souls like I could with my brothers and sisters. I had quite a long time in the dark and the quiet to think about how things should be. And you know what I decided? I decided that no one has the right to take a life. I exist. I was created. And it doesn't matter if my creation was a mistake or not; I should be allowed the right to live my life for as long as I want to—like you humans and Soul Reapers. I deserve that.

"So I refuse to take a life. And I refuse to stand by and do nothing while a life is being taken, because that's the same as taking it myself. I won't ever kill a living thing." The mod soul was looking at Ichigo now, frowning again. But this was a frown of defiance, of the anger that he felt reminiscing about what the Soul Society had done to him.

Ichigo nodded. He understood. He might hate the boys for … well, whatever reason he had to do so. But the boys were alive, and they deserved to keep on living despite whatever insult they had given him. The mod soul had just decided to help them with that right to live.

"Well, well, well …" came a stranger's voice, catching Ichigo off-guard. He spun around, expecting the children's teacher had come to investigate the reports of a violent high school boy terrorising them.

Instead, he saw a man, flanked by three others—two of them only small children. The man was odd in and of himself; dressed in dark green clothes beneath an open black coat, his mess of blonde hair sticking out underneath the striped bucket hat, the wooden clogs on his feet. Clogs? Seriously? Ichigo couldn't fathom any reason any sane, grown man would care to be seen in public wearing clogs.

The boy and girl were both wearing white shirts with a shop's name and logo written on it. _Urahara Store_. Ichigo had never heard of it. And the fourt of them was a massive man much taller than Ichigo's father, bulky around the chest and shoulders with braided hair, a moustache and square spectacles. He was a quiet man, and that in itself was intimidating Ichigo into silence.

"Look what we have here? A mod soul philosopher. Who'd have thought?" the blonde man said with a chuckle. "I finally found you. And you're all beaten up and worn out and on the verge of collapsing. How disappointing."

Quick as a flash, the hooked cane in his hand came up and the tip struck out. Ichigo felt the telltale signs of spiritual pressure building up the instant it touched Ichigo's body's forehead and pushed right through it. It reminded him much like the way Rukia's special glove was able to pull his soul from his body when they went off to fight Hollows.

A soft clatter, and Ichigo saw the small green soul pill rolling away from his body, which, without a soul, toppled backwards like a plank of wood and hit the roof, hard. He winced.

"What the?"

"Mission accomplished," the man said triumphantly. He bent low and picked up the small pill before he returned to his three companions.

"What?" the small boy on his left said, scowling. "I got all geared up for a fight and we're not going to have one?"

"What the hell is going on?" Ichigo demanded of the stranger. He was taking a chance in even bothering to speak to the man. But he wagered that anyone with the ability to push the mod soul pill from his body like that also had the ability to see him in his soul form. "What are you planning on doing with that mod soul?"

"Got no choice," the stranger said. He glanced over his shoulder, tossing the pill up into the air and catching it again. "He's got to be destroyed."

The pill went up again, but Rukia snagged it before it returned to his hand. She backed a step away from him. "That's mine; thank you very much," she declared.

The stranger turned to look at her and sighed. "I'm sorry, Miss Kuchiki," he started blandly. "I can't let you have that."

"Why not, Kisuke? You're not seriously going to tell me that it's become your policy to seize the goods that your customers have already paid for, are you? Because that would be very bad for business, you know?"

"Hey!" The man turned completely to face her and held his hands up in supplication. "How does a full refund sound?"

"I'm fine … but thank you for the offer, Kisuke," Rukia said coldly.

It struck Ichigo at once how much her attitude had changed. Ichigo had, barely an hour ago, become quite angry with her for her own seeming acceptance of the Soul Society's decision to destroy the mod souls. He'd told her that it hardly seemed fair for them to punish those that had done no wrong, just for being what had been intended for them. He'd been angry that with the repeated implications on her part of the superiority of the Soul Society—and the Soul Reapers especially—that they seemed so cold and unfeeling towards something that struck him as being a sentient, living thing.

How could they possibly be so superior with such a heartless point of view?

But now it seemed like she was defending the mod soul, protecting him from whatever this stranger was going to do that would end him. Had that change come about because of what Ichigo had said to her earlier? Or had the mod soul's story of his experiences at the hands of the Soul Society had something to do with it? Could it possibly have been a combination of the two? If so, then Ichigo felt some pride in the fact that he was having some positive influence on her.

"I'm happy with the product I got," she told the stranger. "And we both know that you're operating outside the bounds of the law, here. It's not your job to recall this mod soul, and you're not likely to report it any time soon to those whose job it is."

The stranger paused in thought. What had Rukia meant by "operating outside the bounds of the law"? Hadn't she just given him a spiel about how the laws of her Soul Society were irrefutable and not open for interpretation? If that was really the case …

"I hope you know what you're getting yourself into," he warned her politely. "Don't come blaming me if it gets you into trouble. And it will."

"I won't," she promised stubbornly. Ichigo noticed the glance she shot back at him. "And I've had plenty of trouble since I got here. One more on the list isn't going to kill me."

She turned her back to the man then, discussion over. When she passed Ichigo, she handed him the pill, which he promptly pocketed, and said, "Come on; let's go home."


	23. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

The throbbing in Ichigo's shoulder was what woke him the next morning. He'd been dreaming … dreaming about what, exactly? He couldn't remember. He could never remember his dreams. Unfortunately, he could remember the reason his shoulder hurt.

That damned mod soul.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the aforementioned little devil squatting on his chest in all its fluffy glory.

Ichigo would have been quite content to leave the mod soul in its pill, squared away where he would never lay eyes on it ever again; maybe in a nook at the top corner of his wardrobe, or in the trash where _no one_ would pick it up in a million years. But his desire for revenge for what the mod soul's recklessness had resulted in had won out. He'd used as little cash as possible to purchase the cheapest, grungiest looking soft toy he could find at the toy store.

Then he'd inserted the pill and vented his anger. It was unfortunate that the mod soul couldn't be bruised in that form, but Ichigo absolutely refused to have Rukia secure a gigai for him. To let him have the run of the town again … the thought was unpalatable. He winced at the sudden spike of pain.

"You lazy Soul Reaper wannabe!"

The mod soul's plush body was standing now, his little paws on his hips in his own imitation of a cross look. The folds of material above those beady little toy eyes were creased down a little in what looked like it was supposed to be a frown. Ichigo hadn't seen any other expression on the mod soul's face since he'd given him his new body.

"If you don't get your ass out of bed, I'm going to hide in your backpack and go to school with you," Ichigo was warned. "All the girls are going to have a field day with that one when they find out, you know. 'Oh, poor Ichigo! He's such a baby, coming to school with his ickle teddy!' I'll do it! You watch—"

Ichigo sat up and picked up the mod soul by his pointy little ear in the same motion. He thrashed around, crying out accusations of abuse. Ichigo ignored all of it. It mattered not to him. It wasn't like anyone was likely to hear him from downstairs where—if his bedside clock wasn't lying—they were all likely to be. He tossed the toy over at the wardrobe door, where it collided with a pitiful _whump_ and slid down the door to the floor.

"I can't have you starting the day in a mood like that," Ichigo snapped, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Why don't you make like a real stuffed toy and shut the hell up, Kon?"

He watched as the mod soul got up and dusted itself off in an almost human fashion … except for the fact that he was stuffed inside a toy lion. "Kon? What the hell is 'Kon'?" The frown lifted and the mod soul pointed a felt claw at its own chest. "Me? Where the hell did you come up with a name like that? It sounds stupid."

Ichigo sighed and ran a hand over his face. "It's short for 'mod konpaku', which is apparently what the Soul Reapers call mod souls. I kind of figured that with your history with the Soul Society, you would object to being called Mod Konpaku, or even Konpaku. So Rukia and I talked about it and we settled on Kon."

"You and … who?" Then the little toy shook his head and frowned again up at Ichigo. The sight was actually kind of pathetic. "You're not the boss of me! You don't get to decide what I'm called! I insist you call me 'Mod' instead. Kon sounds stupid by comparison. I can imagine it now: Plush Bod Mod. Isn't that a snappy sounding name?"

"No."

"Why the fuck not?"

"Watch your language. And because you're right—Mod doesn't sound cooler than Kon. But there's absolutely nothing cool about you."

"Oh?" Kon spluttered, clearly irritated. Ichigo just smiled to himself at the outrage. "You can't just—"

The wardrobe door opened then, cutting off anything he had left to say. Rukia was kneeling on her shelf, her brow tightened to express her _own_ irritation. Ichigo swallowed heavily. "I won't stand for all the noise, you hear me? I don't know about you, Ichigo, but I like to get dressed in peace!"

She leapt down from the shelf then, her left foot pinning Kon with a plaintive toy squeak to the floor of Ichigo's room. Kon raised his fists to start beating against her ankle in complaint, but then lowered them slowly and grinned. Ichigo noticed the reason behind that grin instantly and his eyes widened in shock. Surely, she wasn't going to let that one stand.

"I was just telling Ichigo that my name should be Mod instead," Kon started, drawing her attention to his position.

It was a stupid move.

When she noticed that he wasn't looking at her face while speaking to her, but instead up the skirt she wore as part of the high school uniform, her eyes narrowed to slits, her brow drew so tight Ichigo thought it might mould itself that way, and she lifted her foot to stomp down on Kon's grinning face with as much force as she could without breaking the floor beneath him.

"Worth—ow—it!" Kon managed between stomps. For his part, Ichigo threw the cover off himself and got out of bed more fully. His uniform for the day was neatly folded and draped over the back of the chair at his desk.

He started over for them and picked up his school shirt when there was a knock at the door. Rukia froze, and Kon went silent all at once, as if they knew the importance of not giving away their presence to someone who wasn't initiated into the whole Soul Reaper thing.

"Ichigo?" It was one of his sisters.

"I'm getting dressed," Ichigo managed after a few stuttered starts. "What do you want?"

"A couple of your friends from school are downstairs," his younger sister replied through the door. Thankfully, she respected his privacy enough this time not to barge in while she thought he was getting dressed. The situation could have been a little … well, Ichigo might not have heard the last of it if she'd discovered a talking toy and a girl in his room at that time of the morning. And she would, no doubt, feel obligated to report that news to their father.

Ichigo almost groaned at the thought.

"And your breakfast is ready, so hurry up and get downstairs."

"I'll be right down. Thanks, Yuzu," he called back to her. Footsteps indicated that she was walking off, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Likewise, Rukia returned to her wardrobe and started fishing around unnecessarily long for her backpack and her soul pager while Ichigo—hesitantly—stripped off his bed clothes and slipped into his uniform. He had half of the buttons of his shirt done up when he paused.

"Rukia …"

"What is it?" she asked. He wasn't sure if she had turned to look at him.

"What happened yesterday with Kon in my body, what he did at school, around town. You handled that, right?"

The sound of shifting material. She'd turned. He slowly finished buttoning his shirt while facing the open window. When he'd asked if she'd "handled it", what he meant was whether or not she'd erased the memories of anyone that had encountered "his" erratic behaviour. She had a neat little device that allowed her to do so with the push of a button. Though he'd only seen her use it once, on Orihime and Tatsuki a while back when Orihime's brother had become a Hollow and attacked her, he knew of several other instances where she'd used it.

After everything that had happened yesterday, with "Ichigo" kissing Tatsuki and Orihime in front of everyone, leaping up and down heights ranging from three to five stories in plain sight, and his attempted attack on those grade school kids, Ichigo was really hoping that none of it had been left untouched by that nifty device.

He didn't want to be going to school today only to find out that Tatsuki still wanted to break his neck, Orihime was expecting him to ask her out, and everyone else in school was experiencing an array of emotions from wanting to drill him for answers or else drill him into the ground.

"Of course," she said. "You're not saying you'd _want_ them to remember, are you? I kind of assumed you wouldn't. Was I wrong?"

He spun, the last button at the top left undone. "Of course not!" he said quickly. "There's no way I would want them to remember that. Absolutely no way. I was just asking to be sure, that's all it was. You did the right thing."

_But I do feel like _I've_ forgotten something important,_ he thought to himself as she nodded and started over to the window.

And it was true. Since waking … in fact, even yesterday, he'd had the feeling that there was something about to happen that he should have had in mind, something that was important to him. And no matter how many times he'd tried to put his finger on it, he hadn't been able to think of what it could possibly be.

While buckling his belt, he ticked off all the usual suspects—like tests or scheduled quizzes at school, or birthdays—as unlikely. Then he reached over to his desk and picked up his watch, which he then slipped around his wrist and set to buckling.

He froze.

The digital display on the watch's screen showed both the time and date. The time was—well, late. He was definitely going to be late for school, no matter how fast he ran to get there. The date was the sixteenth.

The sixteenth of June.

His heart fell, and in his own mind he could do nought by rip into himself for having forgotten such a thing in the first place. Never before had that happened. Never before had it even been conceivable that he _might_ forget that date.

He was vaguely aware of Rukia speaking from over at the window, but he couldn't exactly hear what she was saying. Did it really matter? Did she really matter?

"Yeah," he muttered to himself without thinking. "Tomorrow."

"Ichigo?"

* * *

The children were all chattering and cheering as the spinning tops circled around each other in the wide, shallow bowl that was sat on the ground between them. They were all wild things that had been running amok in the streets of north Rukon district fourteen before the Soul Reaper had shown up on his off hours to entertain them with a few friendly games.

The residents of the Rukon districts sometimes appreciated that. Sure, there were the extremists that didn't like the Soul Reapers … mostly because occasionally someone within Rukon would be identified as having a high spiritual presence and be taken to the Academy to be trained as a Soul Reaper, often against the wishes of the family they had grown attached to. But the children more oft than not loved the Reapers, and looked up to them.

The spinning top of the eldest of the children, a young girl with dirty blonde hair and a piercing gaze but the bare minimum of a spiritual presence, knocked against his, sending them both spinning wildly to the sides of the bowl. His went out first, and the girl looked up at him with a triumphant grin. The children around her cheered at her victory.

It was his fourth loss against that girl alone, and his tenth that day to this group of little squirts. But that was fine with him. He laughed good-naturedly and ruffled the child's hair. "How about a rematch?" he asked of her, picking up his top and spinning it on the end of his finger.

"You've no time for that," a deep voice said from somewhere to his left.

He turned to seek out the source of the voice, and saw standing off to the side against the wall another Soul Reaper, clad entirely in black with facial coverings that revealed only his eyes. He was built big, and yet had avoided detection as he approached. It was the mark of his trade that he'd accomplished such a feat.

Sighing, he fished a few coins out of his pocket and flicked them over to the girl that had beaten him. He'd judged her to be the leader of the group, and he knew that in Rukon girls like her often looked after the ones that flocked around her. Of course, he could be wrong. But that wasn't going to be his concern.

"Why don't you kids hurry along and get yourselves a treat, or something. I'll have to take a raincheck on that rematch," he said with a smile. They all bade him goodbye as they hurried off after the older blonde girl, laughing and cheering the whole time.

He approached his fellow Soul Reaper and suddenly his jovial demeanour disappeared, and he was all business. "Who am I being sent after?" he asked, for that was surely the only reason that his off-hours time would be interrupted.

The other grunted. "Your prey is Rukia Kuchiki from Squad Thirteen."

"Kuchiki?" the Soul Reaper muttered. He ran a finger along his chin in thought and then tipped the sakkat back to look up at his larger companion. "What has she done that's merited it?"

"She's been in the human world for far longer than her assignment required of her," the larger Reaper said. "Her assignment was for sixty days, and she has been there nearly ninety."

"And that's all?"

The other Reaper started to walk past him, back towards the main entrance into the Seireitei. "I wouldn't be talking to you at all if that was all she had done wrong," he growled. "I haven't been given specifics, but there's something else going on here that needs to be investigated. Find out what it is."

"What level of force am I authorised to use?"

The larger Soul Reaper stopped, looked down at him from the side, and narrowed his eyes. "Take care of it," he said. The unspoken message was clear. "Quickly."

And then he was gone in the blink of an eye.


End file.
